Testicular and Epididymal Characteristcs of Rabbit Bucks Fed Diets Containing Cottonseed Cake Supplemented with Carrot (Daucus carota) or Ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe)

This experiment was conducted to investigate the reproductive characteristics of rabbit bucks fed cottonseed cake-based diets supplemented with carrot or ginger. Twenty four (24) cross bred (New Zealand White X Chinchilla) 6-8 weeks old rabbit bucks were involved in the study. The bucks were balanced for weight and allocated to four dietary treatments T1, T2, T3 and T4. Treatment T1 (control) contained soyabean meal (SBM) as the main plant protein source denoted as (SBM or 0% CSC). T2 had 100% SBM replaced with cottonseed cake (CSC), while T3 and T4 had T2 supplemented with carrot and ginger respectively. Except for testicular width, testicular characteristics were not significantly (P>0.05) affected. Testicular width decreased from 2.20cm in the control (T1) to 1.63cm in T2 (100% CSC). Mean epididymal weight and mean epididymal length were significantly (P<0.05) affected with mean epididymal length decreasing from 13.72cm in the control to 8.32cm in T2 (100% CSC). Supplementing T2 with either carrot or ginger increased the epididymal characteristics significantly (P<0.05). It could be concluded from this study that CSC with or without carrot or ginger supplementation may not have adverse effect on testicular characteristics. However CSC depressed epididymal characteristics which were corrected by carrot or ginger supplementation with ginger proving more effective. Keywords: Rabbit buck, Reproductive characteristics, Cottonseed cake, Carrot and Ginger