Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
1- Animal Production Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt
2
Animal Production Research Institute, Agriculture Research Center, Dokki, Giza,
Abstract
This review is focusing on the impact of water salinity on rabbit’s physiological, reproductive and productive responses, since the rabbits did not take a great interest in this respect. It was found from the trials that, water salinity with less or equal 3000 ppm TDS may improve both does and their progeny through increasing mineral requirements, water and feed consumption, then daily weight gain and body weight, and doe's milk yield are increased with no negative impacts on blood hematology and biochemical parameters. Meanwhile, increasing salts level in drinking water (more than 3000 ppm TDS) caused negative effects such as decreasing feed intake then body weight decreased which caused a decline in carcass weight and its components. Also, litter size and litter weight decreased. In addition, blood metabolites and metabolic hormones including total protein, albumin, globulin, glucose, and thyroid hormones were reduced. Furthermore, both male and female fertility markedly deteriorated. In contrast, some minerals increased with increasing level of salinity such as potassium and phosphorus, body water retention, urea nitrogen and creatinine also increased due to kidney failure.
So, in case of increasing level of water salinity (more than 3000 TDS) simple treatments should be applied such as diluted the saline water with fresh water in order to alleviate and minimize the negative impacts of salinity on rabbit's productive and reproductive performance.
Keywords