Digestibility of nutrients by transgenic and non-transgenic rabbits

Abstract

The aim of this work was to compare digestibility of nutrients between transgenic and non-transgenic groups of rabbits from different lines. The experiment was carried out on a population of transgenic and non-transgenic rabbits. The population of transgenic animals (n=5) was presented by the New Zealand White rabbit F1 offspring that were born after breeding of transgenic founders (WAP-hFVIII gene construct) with non-transgenic rabbits of the same breed. Non-transgenic animals were represented by four different populations of meat rabbits. The faeces were collected individually during 4 consecutive days (every 2 hours) according to the European reference method for rabbit digestion trials. Chemical analysis of the diets and faeces for dry matter, crude protein, crude fibre, crude fat, nitrogen free extract, ash, organic matter, ADF and NDF was carried out according to the same method. The population of transgenic rabbits in our experiment showed the lowest coefficients of digestibility of crude fibre, ash, ADF and a higher digestibility of crude protein, crude fat and organic matter, but the differences were not statistical significant comparing with non-transgenic rabbits. This study showed that the integration of the WAP-hFVIII gene into rabbit genome does not affect significantly the digestibility of nutrients in commercial rabbit diet.