Effect of dietary inclusion of processed Mucuna pruriens seed meal on growing rabbits

The current study was conducted to evaluate the effect of including differently processed Mucuna pruriens seed meals as tropical feed resource on growth performance, apparent nutrient digestibility, carcass characteristics, and economical efficiency of growing rabbits. Forty eight growing California rabbits aged 7 weeks, allocated in individual cages, were randomly distributed into four experimental groups of 12 rabbits each; the animals were assigned to four dietary treatments containing 25% of cooked Mucuna seed meal (MSM), alkaline treated MSM, or autoclaved MSM as well as the control diet that did not contain MSM. The results showed that cooking or autoclaving M. pruriens seeds did not affect the chemical composition of the seeds, however, the alkaline process reduced CP, aNDF, ADF, and EE content of the seeds by 6.03%, 6.38%, 17.74%, and 26.17%, respectively compared to the raw seeds. There was no significant difference between the control group and each of cooked and alkaline treated MSM regarding final body weight being 2066 vs. 2015 and 1999 g, respectively; but the autoclaved MSM was significantly lower by 4.85% than the control group. Autoclaved and alkaline treated MSM groups had significantly lower daily weight gain (29.0 and 29.8 g) than the control group (31.4 g), but the cooked MSM treatment (30.1 g) was not different from the control group. There were no significant differences regarding DM, OM, or GE digestibility among the experimental groups, the highest CP digestibility coefficient was recorded by the control and cooked MSM groups (0.75 and 0.72, respectively), whereas cooked MSM group showed significantly the highest digestibility coefficient of aNDF and ADF. No significant differences were detected among the treatments in the dressing percentage. The inclusion of cooked, alkaline treated or autoclaved MSM improved the economical efficiency by 63%, 53%, and 36%, respectively in comparison with the control group. The results of this study revealed that cooking treatment is the best method of processing Mucuna seeds; therefore 25% of cooked MSM could be included in the rabbit diets without any deleterious effect on performance or carcass traits with higher economical efficiency of growing rabbits.