Title: FORAGE UTILIZATION BY RABBITS Abstract approved:

Several experiments were conducted to evaluate various forages and forage levels for use in rabbit diets. Several tropical forages were evaluated for their potential in feeding rabbits. One of the tropical forages, Desmodium distortum produced better growth performance than alfalfa meal. The tropical forages were used to derive prediction equations for digestible energy (DE) from chemical analysis. One good predictor of DE was found to be, DE(cal/g) = 4.39-0.0533(CWC). Leaves, stems, heads and whole plant preparations of Amaranthus hypochondriacs and whole plant Amaranthus retroflexus gave poor growth performance compared to alfalfa meal when fed to growing rabbits. Amaranthus contains substances which are unpalatable to rabbits as assessed by low consumption of it. Results show that these two species of amaranthus are not good substitutes for alfalfa meal in the diets of growing rabbits