A STUDY OF DIETARY PROTEIN FOR GROWING CALIFORNIAN RABBITS IN THE MEKONG DELTA OF VIETNAM

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING CAN THO UNIVERSITY TRUONG THANH TRUNG A STUDY OF DIETARY PROTEIN FOR GROWING CALIFORNIAN RABBITS IN THE MEKONG DELTA OF VIETNAM DOCTORAL THESIS IN ANIMAL SCIENCE 2017 i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING CAN THO UNIVERSITY TRUONG THANH TRUNG A STUDY OF DIETARY PROTEIN FOR GROWING CALIFORNIAN RABBITS IN THE MEKONG DELTA OF VIETNAM DOCTORAL THESIS IN ANIMAL SCIENCE SCIENTIFIC SUPERVISOR ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR NGUYEN THI KIM DONG 2017 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to thank to lectures at Department of Animal Science, Can Tho University who gave me useful knowledge and encouraged me during the course I want to express particular appreciation to my supervisors, Association Professor Dr Nguyen Thi Kim Dong and Professor Dr Nguyen Van Thu, Department of Animal Science, Can Tho University, Vietnam, for all your support, advice and explanation throughout the research, also for their reading and correcting my thesis papers I learnt a lot of useful knowledge and real life experience from them My thanks are extended to my classmates for sharing knowledge and experience in class Many thanks to my friends in rabbit farm in Can Tho University for their help and encouragement to me Last but not least, special thanks to my parents, younger brother, sisters, aunt and my girlfriend for their love and moral support I would like to thank all the people who contributed to this study Truong Thanh Trung iii ABSTRACT This thesis is based on five experiments that were conducted at the experimental farm in Cantho City to evaluate protein utilization of growing Californian rabbits in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam The first experiment was to identify the nutritional values of some common feedstuffs for feeding rabbits in the Mekong Delta The second was to determine the optimum level of crude protein in diets of growing Californian rabbits The third was to compare and choose appropriate protein sources in diets of growing Californian rabbits The fourth was to find out optimum level of lysine and threonine in diets for growing Californian rabbits And the last experiment was to determine the optimum ME level in diets of growing Californian rabbits under feeding conditions in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam The results showed that in the first experiment, almost essential and non-essential amino acid components of water spinach and Psophocarpus scandens were higher than those of Operculina turpethum and para grass Sweet potato vine and water spinach leaves were good feedstuffs with high CP values and proportional fiber components Soybean had low values of essential amino acids and non-essential amino acids than those of fish meal, feather meal and blood meal with the exception of methionine, glutamic and arginine concentrations In the second experiment, the CP intake increased (P