Effect of Dietary Insoluble and Soluble Fibre on Growth Performance, Digestibility, and Nitrogen, Energy, and Mineral Retention Efficiency in Growing Rabbits

Abstract

Dietary soluble fibre limits the incidence of epizootic rabbit enteropathy (ERE) and improves the energy and nitrogen balance in low-insoluble fibre diets, while high-insoluble fibre diets seem to favour ERE. This study assessed whether the positive effects of soluble fibre are influenced by the level of insoluble fibre. Four diets (2 × 2 factorial arrangement) were used with two levels of insoluble fibre (314 vs. 393 g/kg DM) and soluble fibre (87 vs. 128 g/kg DM), resulting in four diets with increasing total dietary fibre levels. Growth performance and chemical composition (body and carcass) (28–62 days of age), faecal digestibility (54–57 days of age), and jejunal morphometry functionality (39 days of age) were determined. Mortality was low (<1%) and treatments did not influence it. Insoluble and soluble fibre tended to reduce the growth rate (p ≤ 0.109), body protein, and fat accretion (p = 0.049 to 0.120), but only insoluble fibre impaired feed efficiency (p < 0.001). The efficiency of digestible energy used for growth was impaired with the increase of total dietary fibre (p = 0.027), while that of nitrogen remained majorly unaffected. In conclusion, in healthy rabbits, the increase of either insoluble or soluble fibre had no benefit.

Supplementation with Agave fourcroydes powder on growth performance, carcass traits, organ weights, gut morphometry, and blood biochemistry in broiler rabbits

“…Apparently, the dietary supplementation of A. fourcroydes did not decrease the protein efficiency of the diet due to the values of blood urea nitrogen (32) . Many reports indicate that feeds rich in fructans such as A. fourcoydes lower serum glucose by increasing the secretion of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP 1) in endocrine L cells in the intestine, authors have found similar results when using extracts from Agave fourcroydes in the diets of laboratory mice (24) .…”

Effect of Feeding Insoluble Fiber on the Microbiota and Metabolites of the Caecum and Feces of Rabbits Recovering from Epizootic Rabbit Enteropathy Relative to Non-Infected Rabbits

“…Data for live weight relative to disease status and the fiber content were compared by repeated measurements two-way ANOVA with replicates ( n = 4). The use of 4 replicates per treatment is more than many previous publications have used for similar experiments across a range of different works with a range of animal species (e.g., n = 3 being used regularly), although not as large as some works that use larger numbers [ 35 , 45 ].…”

“…In addition, PERMANOVA was carried out following the methodology described in the manual of the Vegan package [ 45 ]. In the case of the analysis of the bacterial diversity, this was assessed by calculating the Shannon Index, the Simpson Index, the Chao1 Index, and the Abundance-based Coverage Estimators (ACE), following the methodology of Oksanen et al [ 46 ].…”

Si el conejo, Oryctolagus cuniculus, es monogástrico ¿Por qué es importante que consuma fibra?

“…3). A medida que disminuye el contenido de fibra en la dieta incrementa la incidencia de la Enteropatía Epizoótica del Conejo (EEC) (Farías-Kovac et al (2020). La EEC es una patología con trastornos digestivos y enterotoxemia ocasionada por proliferación de bacterias Clostridium y Bacteroides en el intestino grueso.…”