Efficacy of Amylofeed® in growing rabbit diets.

The efficacy of Amylofeed® (an amylase, b-glucanase and b-xylanase enzyme complex) was evaluated on growing rabbit performance. Three isonutritive diets (medicated with bacitracine) were formulated corresponding to the levels of Amylofeed®: 0 (diet A), 400 (diet B) and 500 (diet C) ppm. Four hundred and fifty six and four hundred and eighty New Zealand White x Californian rabbits weaned at 35 days of age, weighing 910 and 960 g as average, respectively, were fed with the experimental diets for three weeks after weaning in two experiments. From 56 to 65 days of age animals were fed with a common non-medicated diet. In the first assay, the mortality during the experimental period was very low (2.6%) and treatments had no effect on any of the performance traits studied. In the second assay a higher incidence of diarrhoea and associated mortality occurred with respect to the first. In these circumstances, the supplementation of feed with 400 or 500 ppm of Amylofeed® significantly (P=0.03) reduced mortality from 27.0 to 19.7 and 14.8%, respectively. An improvement of feed efficiency (by 16%; P=0.03) was observed in animals fed with the two enzyme supplemented diets in the overall period (35 to 65 of age) with respect to the animals fed with the control diet. It is concluded that enzyme supplementation has beneficial effects on mortality, feed efficiency and growth of fattening rabbits when the incidence of intestinal disorders and mortality in the control group are of relevance.