Comparative Study For Newzealand White Rabbits and Their Crosses under Different Production Systems

In areas of high human. population growth and limited cultivated land, particularly such as in the developing countries, rabbits could play a major role to alleviate the shortage of meat production. Rabbits have a number of characteristics that would make them particularly suitable as meat producing small animals. They can be successfully raised on diets which are unfit for human consumption, based on forages and by-products. Moreover, rabbits bred for meat production show high efficiency in feed conversion at least if they are slaughtered at the age of 8 to 10 week of age. Growth rate of rabbits is rapid, slaughter weight of youngs is reached in 8 to 10 weeks of age. There is much variability in economical traits of rabbits such as prolificacy and growth rate. Thus it should be possible, by breeding plans and use of breed diversity to make rapid improvement in rabbit performance. Evaluation of domestic rabbit breeds and crossbreeds for economic traits is necessary for commercial operations. Some studies evaluated the productive performance of rabbit breeds which has demonstrated the potentialities of these breeds to maximize bioeconomic returns of the commercial rabbit enterprise. the present work was carrid out to comparative study for new - zealand white nzw with black rex hybrid and their crosses under different production systems. the pre-wening of traits of litter size and litter weght at birh, 21 days and weaning, mating number and gestation were recorded individual body weights at 4,6,8,10 and12 weeks and carcass traits were also recorded. the effect of breeding grops, mating intervals, parity, month and season of kinding and birth size were studied as a factors influencing pre-and post-litter traits in the rabbits.