Performance response, carcass evaluation and economic benefit or rabbits fed sorghum offal-based diets

An eight-week feeding trial was conducted to investigate the performance, carcass quality, haematological indices and economics of production of rabbits fed dietary sorghum offal substitute for maize grain. A total of forty (40) weaned rabbits with a mean weight range of 820-850 g were randomly distributed to five treatment diets where 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100% of sorghum offal replaced maize grain in the gross feed composition to give Diets 1 (control), 2, 3, 4 and 5, respectively. Each treatment diet was replicated eight times with a rabbit taken as a replicate. The determined chemical composition of the experimental diets ranged between 17.12% and17.43% for crude protein (CP), 11.48 and 14.89% for crude fibre (CF), 5.04 and 7.74% for ether extract or fat (EE), 54.17 and 56.41% for nitrogen free extract (NFE) and 3069.35kcal/kg to 3241.17ME(kcal/kg). While the results on performance showed no significant difference (P>0.05) in feed intake by rabbits fed the five test diets, there appeared to be significant decrease (P