Dried chicory pulp as fibre source in fattening rabbit diets

One-hundred-ninety-two hybrid weanling rabbits of 32 days were fed one of 4 iso-energetic (9.65 MJ/kg) and iso-nitrogeneous (15.4% CP) diets: a low dietary digestible fibre content (Control diet), a high digestible fibre diet (Beet pulp diet) and 2 diets with chicory pulp. Chicory pulp was introduced (10 and 20%) in the fattening diet mainly at the expense of beet pulp, as an alternative source of soluble fibre. Each dietary treatment consisted of 12 replicates of 4 rabbits. Weight gain was high (average of 54g/day) and no differences were found among the experimental diets for the whole fattening period, although a higher (P<0.05) growth was observed for rabbits fed the diet with 20% of chicory pulp during the first 2 weeks of fattening respect to the control diet (63.0 vs 58.7 g/d, respectively). However, feed conversion ratio was improved (P<0.05) in rabbits fed the high digestible fibre diets. Mortality was low and not influenced by the dietary treatment. It is concluded that chicory pulp is a good alternative digestible fibre source in balanced diets for rabbits and can be used at least till 20%.