Food intake, digestibility, body weight and fur growth of laboratory rat (Rattus norvegicus) fed with diet containing mulberry (Morus alba) leaves

Mulberry leaf (Morus a/ba) has been shown to have a significant positive effect on the performance of broiler chicken when it was fed in ground form and therefore has potential as dietary supplement for poultry. However, it is not known whether this effect is due to the additional dry matter that comes from mulberry powder or from the active ingredient contained in it. Therefore, the aim of this study is to compare the effect of feeding mulberry leaves powder with mulberry leaf extract on dry matter intake, digestibility, body weight gained and the fur growth of laboratory rats. Eighteen laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus) were randomly selected and randomly allocated to three treatments with 6 replicates over a period of three weeks. The treatments were (i) Treatment 1 (control) diet consisted of 100% of commercial food mixed with 10ml of water, (ii) Treatment 2 diet consisted of 90% of commercial food and 10% of mulberry leaves powder (MLP) mixed with l Oml of water, (iii) Treatment 3 diet consisted of 100 % of commercial food mixed with 10ml of mulberry leaf extract (MLE). This experiment showed that there was no significant effect (p > 0.05) of dietary treatments on the dry matter intake, body weight gain and fur growth of the laboratory rats. However, dry matter digestibility was significantly (p < 0.05) affected by dietary treatment, with digestibility for treatment 2 being significantly lower than treatment 1 and 3. MLP has higher crude fibre content while MLE has negligible fibre content. MLE also showed higher value of ash, phosphorus, crude fat, crude protein and energy content. This study shows that T3 is more digestible than T2. However the greater digestibility of the T3 is not sufficient in promoting the significance difference in weight gain and fur growth of rats in this study