A Preliminary Study of the Use of Hormones on the Reproductive Performance of some Breeds of Rabbits

Abstract

Reproductive hormones are often used in the animal production, including in rabbits to increase the rate of production, e.g. in the AI practices. Rabbit is a proli c animal, yet its reproductive rate in Indonesia is slow. A preliminary study on reproductive performance of rabbits with or without injection of hCG was carried out at Balai Penelitian Ternak, Ciawi-Bogor in 2014. Five breeds of rabbits, i.e. Rex, Reza, Hybrid NZW Hyla and Hycole and NZWxLocal cross were treated with or without injection of 0.2 cc of hCG. Each treatment, depended on the breed, consisted of 15 – 57 individual replications. A randomized complete block design was applied with SPSS IBM 20. Measurement were made on changes of bodyweight of does and kits, receptivity and conception rate of the does, gestation period, litter size (LS) at birth, 21 days and 35 days, stilbirth and kit mortalities during lactation. Results indicated that the use of hormones signi cantly increased the oestrus rate (61-86% vs 26-29 %), receptivity and conception rate (48- 56 % vs 17-36 %) in all treated breeds although the rate was different between breeds. The use of hormones also increased litter size at birth of Rex (7.0 vs 5.8), Reza (6.8 vs 5.8) and Hycole (8.2 vs 5.8). It’s interesting to note that NZW x Local cross produced rather high LS at birth, 8.9 ± 2.2 kits alive. Gestation period was not different among treatments, ranged from 31.4 – 32.5 days.