Document Type : Full research articles
Authors
1
Animal and Poultry Production Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Damanhour University, Damanhour, Egypt
2
Livestock Research Dept., Arid Lands Cultivation Research Institute, City of Scientific Research and Technological Applications (SRTA-City), New Borg El-Arab, Alexandria 21934, Egypt
3
Poultry Production Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt
4
Damanhour University, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Animal and Poultry Production, Damanhour, Beheira, Egypt
Abstract
In order to investigate the implications of bee venom (BV) injection on growth performance, carcass, relative organ weight, the performance index, and economic efficiency from 5 to 10 weeks, 45 grower male V-line rabbits were employed. Nine rabbits were randomly assigned to each of five the treatment groups that were of identical size. Rabiits were divided into three identical replicates for each treatment. The 1st group was untreated as a negative control. The 2nd group was injected dilution of normal saline (0.9%) as a positive control. The 3rd, 4th and 5th groups were injected 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 mg of BV/ rabbit, respectively. The injection volume was 0.1 ml/ rabbit, the rabbits were injected at 5 and 7 weeks of age, and the experiment lasted for 10 weeks. The BV injected groups had higher significant body weight (BW), body weight gain (BWG) and feed consumption (FC) compared to the negative and positive control groups at 10 weeks of age. The 0.3 mg/ rabbit of BV injected group had a significantly better feed conversion ratio (FCR) compared to the negative and positive control groups during 5-10 week intervals. The results of all studied traits of carcass showed highly significant differences among the studied groups. The study clearly indicates that injecting growing V-line rabbits with BV twice during the period from 5 to 10 weeks of age with the studied doses, especially 0.3 mg level, resulted in a significant improvement in performance traits, performance index and relative economic efficiency.
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