IMPACT OF DIETARY PROBIOTIC ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE, CARCASS TRAITS, SERUM BIOCHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS AND IMMUNE RESPONSIVENESS IN BROILER RABBITS

The objective of the present study is to investigate the impact of dietary probiotic administration on growth parameters, carcass parameters, serum biochemical constituents and immune responsiveness in growing rabbits. A total number of 54 rabbits aged 4 weeks were allocated randomly into three experimental treatments with levels of dietary probiotic (0, 1 and 2%). The probiotic containing 2.67 x 1011 CFU/g of Bacillus licheniformis. There were 9 replicates of each dietary treatment with 2 rabbits each. Dietary probiotic had no significant effect on body weight gain, feed conversion ratio, carcass % and carcass parts percentages including front%, mid%, hind %, skin %, and head%. Also, dietary probiotic supplementation had no significant impact on internal organs including heart, testes, lunges, kidney and thymus, while liver % was reduced due to dietary 2% probiotic in growing rabbits. Probiotic supplementation had insignificant impacts on all blood biochemical traits including total protein, albumin, globulin, cholesterol, triglycerides and urea in fattening rabbits. Dietary probiotic supplementation had a beneficial impact on cell-mediated immunity at 24 h post-injection of phytohemagglutinin P (PHA-P) into the left ear in growing rabbits. It could be concluded that dietary probiotic had a positive impact on cell-mediated immunity, while growth parameters, carcass traits, and serum biochemical constituents were not affected.