Estimating Apparent Nutrient Digestibility of Diets Containing <i>Leucaena leucocephala</i> or <i>Moringa oleifera</i> Leaf Meals for Growing Rabbits by Two Methods

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the nutrient digestibility of growing rabbits fed diets with different levels of either Leucaena leucocephala (LLM) or Moringa oleifera (MOLM) leaf meals and also to compare total collection and TiO2 marker methods for estimating digestibility. A total of 30 California growing rabbits (1.81±0.19 kg live weight on average) were randomly distributed into five experimental groups of six rabbits each and were housed in individual cages. The groups were control, 30% LLM, 40% LLM, 30% MOLM, and 40% MOLM. All groups received pelleted diets for two weeks; diets also contained 4 g/kg titanium dioxide as dietary marker. Daily feed intake was recorded during the whole experimental period and total feces were collected daily and weighed individually during four days. The results showed that there were no difference (p>0.05) in feed, dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM), crude protein (CP), digestible energy, and crude fiber (CF) intake between the control group and the other experimental groups. The apparent digestibility values of DM, OM, CP, CF, acid detergent fiber, and gross energy were the highest for control group (p = 0.001), meanwhile MOLM diets had generally higher nutrient digestibility coefficients than LLM diets. Increasing the inclusion level of leaf meal in the diet from 30% to 40% improved the digestibility of CF from 45.02% to 51.69% for LLM and from 48.11% to 55.89% for MOLM. Similar results for apparent nutrient digestibility coefficients were obtained when either total collection or indigestible marker method was used. In conclusion, the digestibility of MOLM containing diets were better than LLM diets, furthermore TiO2 as an external marker could be used as a simple, practical and reliable method to estimate nutrients digestibility in rabbit diets.

Tributyrin‐supplemented high‐soya bean meal diets of juvenile black sea bream, Acanthopagrus schlegelii : Study on growth performance and intestinal morphology and structure

“…Digestibility is an important factor in evaluating the availability of nutrients (Safwat, Sarmiento‐Franco, Santos‐Ricalde, Nieves, & Sandoval‐Castro, ). Results of nutrient digestibility obtained during this experiment were slightly higher than those in previous studies on black sea bream (Kalhoro et al, ; Zhou et al, ), which may be caused by the residue of uneaten feed collected during the faecal sampling.…”

Effects of replacement of alfalfa by big-leaf mulberry on growth performance, digestion and meat quality in growing rabbits

“…In Africa and China, the use of dried foliage and pea grains in rabbit feeding has been reported in several studies (Lounaouci-Ouyed et al, 2014;Safwat et al, 2015;Abu Hafsa et al, 2016;Shang et al, 2017), while in China, data on the use of these local raw materials in concentrate pelleted diets are inexistent for mulberry. All cited studies indicated that rabbits can use grass and leaves efficiently.…”

Reliability of acid-insoluble ash as internal marker for the measurement of digestibility in rabbits

“…determined either by the total collection method or by the TiO 2 method yielded similar results. Most likely, the addition of 4 g TiO 2 /kg diet in the work of Safwat et al (2015) resulted in lower variation and higher accuracy in TiO 2 determination compared to the 1 g TiO 2 /kg diet employed in our study. When using external markers, it is usually assumed that there is a homogeneous dispersion of the marker in the feed and consequently in the digestive tract.…”

“…>2-3 g TiO 2 /kg diet) to compensate for the increased variability in CTTAD measurements. For instance, Safwat et al (2015) found that the digestibility of nutrients in rabbit diets Table 5: Dry matter (DM) intake and excretion during the 4-day faecal collection period, analysed marker in feed and faeces, and faecal recovery (%) of acid-insoluble ash (AIA) and titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) in experiment 1 (means±standard error of mean). Table 6: Coefficient of total tract apparent digestibility (CTTAD) of dry matter (DM) using the European reference method and the marker techniques in experiment 1 (means±standard error of mean).…”

“…Huang et al (1954) found that Cr 2 O 3 was a suitable marker in a digestion trial with rabbits. In a recent study, the use of TiO 2 was also suggested as a good alternative to the total collection method (Safwat et al, 2015). However, both studies were limited to a simple comparison of the digestibility values between marker and total collection methods, and did not evaluate the faecal recovery of the marker, which is the most important indicator of its efficacy.…”