Performance and Haematological Parameters of Growing Rabbits Fed with Noodle Waste as a Partial Replacement for Maize

It has been established that in many developing countries of the world, the reason for the decrease in consumption of animal proteins is the insufficient consumption of traditional livestock-cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens. (1) approximately 854 million people, representing 12.6% of the world'spopulation, are severely malnourished. To solve this, (2) argued that non-traditional meat sources suitable for smallholders need to be explored.

Rabbits have high reproductive potential and a unique ability to act as a flexible financial reserve. In particular, rabbit breeding in Nigeria offers the greatest potential to increase the quality and quantity of protein intake due to the short generation interval (4). Maize (Zea mays) is the main source of energy for feeding livestock in Nigeria, but it is also needed by humans and processing industries (5) The demand for maize in Nigeria has increased and this has led to a great hike in price of livestock feed; therefore, concrete efforts are needed to find alternative, inexpensive sources of nutritional ingredients with little or no competition with human consumption (5). In recent years, agro-industrial waste products have become popular feed components in poultry diets in Nigeria (6), (7). Examples of such products are kitchen waste, canning industry waste, potato pulp waste, citrus fruit waste, bakery waste, kola nut flour, cocoa bean flour, pigeon pea flour, Bambara groundnut flour, cashew flour, etc.

Since its introduction in the Nigerian kitchen, instant noodles have become popular, well accepted and found in the kitchen of almost every Nigerian home (8). This caused a big boom of the industry and a corresponding amount of waste in the industry. Instant noodles have several advantages over other non-conventional noodles. Instant noodles are intended for human consumption, therefore they are hygienically packaged and this eliminates the fear of contamination. Instant noodle waste has no known anti-nutritional factors (9) and also has more metabolizable energy than maize (10). The density composition of noodle waste (NW) has been reported to be comparable to that of maize (10). Noodle waste is a suitable source of energy, it does not directly compete with humans as food source, it does not need further processing before being incorporated into the diet and its price is stable and favorable compared to maize.

Inmost developing countries, such as Nigeria, animal protein consumption has fallen below (11) the recommended 35g per animal per day. The apparent reason for the anomaly is the sharp rise in the prices of meat and other animal products such as milk and eggs, which have become unaffordable for the common man. This culminated in various malnutrition diseases such as kwashiorkor, beriberi, marasmus and many others in babies and children, not only in rural areas but also in big cities (12). For this, it is urgently necessary to promote the production of small and highly productive livestock, such as rabbits, whose turnover is fast. Very low production costs. However, the high cost of energy and protein foods such as maize and soybeans and the intense competition between humans and livestock for these foods is a concern. Therefore, replacing maize with agricultural by-products in poultry rations significantly reduces production costs (13). With increasing demand for maize and maize products (14), this has encouraged research into the use of alternative and cheaper feed resources, especially agro-industrial by-products and waste, to replace maize in livestock feed, reduce feed costs and thus reduce total cost of production (15). It can be argued that feed costs can be minimized by using cheaper, non-traditional feed ingredients such as noodle waste. The aim of this study is therefore to determine the performance characteristics and hematological parameters of rabbits fed different quantities of instant noodle waste flour as a partial substitute for maize.