Estimation of digestibility of compound diets for rabbits using the in vitro gas production technique

Abstract:

The in vitro gas production technique was used to predict the digestibility of ten diets in rabbits. Using a step-wise linear regression approach, relationships were established between the in vivo coefficients of digestibility of dry matter (dDM), organic matter (dOM) and energy (dGE) and in vitro organic matter losses (OM) and potential gas production (A, ml.g^-1). The best prediction equation was: dDM (%) = - 40.2 + 1.026 OM/(%) + 0.150 A (ml.g^-1) (R² = 0.748 and RSD = 3.66). In conclusion the results suggest that the in vitro gas production technique could be a promising method to predict the nutritive value of rabbit diets. Nevertheless because of the limited number of diets used for this study, the accuracy and the usefulness of this method has to be confirmed.

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