Fawzia A. Hassan¹, E. M. Hoballah², M.M. Basyony³ and Sh. A. El-Medany⁴

¹Department of By-products Utilization Research, Animal Production Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Giza, Egypt. E-mail address: fawzia_amer@yahoo.com

²Agricultural and Biological Research Division, National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt.

³Department of Poultry Nutrition, Animal Production Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Egypt.

⁴Regional Center for Food and Feed; Agriculture Research Center, Giza, Egypt.

Abstract :

This study was carried out to investigate the effect of different levels of dietary selenium enrichedmicro-algae supplementationon growth performance, carcass characteristics, blood biochemical constituents, and anti-oxidative status of rabbitsunder Egyptian summer conditions. Total of 90 male growing New Zealand White rabbits, six weeks old with an average initial body weight 757.5 g were used in this study. Rabbits were randomly allocated to six experimental groups, with 15 rabbits in each group. The first was a control group, the other five groups offered feed containing, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.5 mg Se-algae /kg diet, respectively. The results showed that final body weight and average body weight gain were not affected (P>0.05) by selenium enrichedmicro-algae supplementation. Feed contain Se-algae at 0.2 mg significantly (P<0.011) improved feed conversion ratio, the best feed conversion ratio (2.28 g feed/g gain). Treatment with Se-algae  caused significant increase in serum total protein, and globulin concentration while reduce albumin concentration, rabbits fed diet supplemented with 0.1 and 0.2 mg Se-algae were the highest groups in High density lipoprotein (HDL) concentration (55.26 and 54.33 mg/dl, respectively). Dietary treatments with Se-algae significantly (P<0.0001) reduced total cholesterol, Low density lipoprotein (LDL) and total lipids. There was a significant increase in total antioxidant capacity (TAC), Glutathione Peroxidase (GSH-Px), Superoxide dismutase (SOD) and Catalase (CAT) as Se-algae supplementation increased, additionally, rabbit fed diets supplemented with 0.2 and 0.4 mg Se-algae were the highest in T-AOC, (3.28 and 3.19 mMol/L, respectively). Also, rabbit fed diet supplemented 0.2 mg Se-algae recorded the best serum GSH-Px, SOD and CAT (2.68, 47.04 and 640.67mU/ml, respectively). Dietary selenium enrichedalgae significantly (P<0.0001) reduced thiobarbituric acid reactive substance (TBARS), compared with the control group. As rabbit fed diet supplemented with 0.4 mg Se-algae achieved the best hot carcass weight (1498.79g), dressing (63.20%), edible giblets (3.80%) and total edible parts (67.02%). In conclusion, selenium enriched spirulina supplementation improved growth performance, anti-oxidative status and rabbit utilized Se more efficiently in spirulina as organic form of selenium under hot conditions. Accordingly, rabbit meat can be fortified with selenium through dietary supplementation of selenium enrichedmicro-algae.

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