Feed efficiency in production: Nutritional, technico-economical and environmental aspects Thierry Gidenne, L Maertens

To cite this version:

Thierry Gidenne, L Maertens. Feed efficiency in rabbit production: Nutritional, technico-economical and environmental aspects. 11. World Rabbit Congress, Jun 2016, Qingdao, China. ￿hal-02046863￿

HAL Id: hal-02046863 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02046863 Submitted on 22 Feb 2019

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Feed amd Feeding

FEED EFFICIENCY IN RABBIT PRODUCTION: NUTRITIONAL, TECHNICO-ECONOMICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS

Maertens L.1, Gidenne T.2*

1 ILVO, Animal Science Unit, Scheldeweg 68, B-9090, MELLE, Belgium 2 GenPhySE, Université de Toulouse, INRA, INPT, ENVT, Castanet Tolosan, France *Corresponding author: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Feed accounts for the largest part of the production costs in animal production. Therefore feed efficiency, mostly expressed as (FCR), is a key indicator to judge the performance and profitability of a farming system. In intensive rabbit breeding, the global farm FCR (maternity + fattening units) decreased from 3.8 to 3.4 in European farms during the past 15 years. By consequence, nitrogen and phosphorus output were reduced by approximately 10%. This improvement sources from a joint progress in: health control, nutritional factors and strategies, management and genetic progress. In order to optimize farms’ FCR both the reproducing stock as the fattening unit have to be considered. This review summarizes the impact of different strategies to optimize FCR under intensive production conditions, in which are fed exclusively a pelleted diet. High performing reproduction stock results in a reduced FCR in the maternity. The use of diets with nutrient levels to optimize digestive health, together with an appropriate feeding restriction after weaning, leads to minimal losses and has a large impact on the FCR. If the different fibre requirements are met, an increase of the dietary energy level, especially in the finishing stage, reduces the FCR with approximately 0.15 points for an increase of 0.5 MJ DE. In the future, it seems possible to improve further the feed efficiency, and thus to reduce both the inputs and output to reach a global farm FCR of 3.0, similar to that recorded in pig breeding.

Key words: rabbit farming, feed efficiency, management, environmental release

INTRODUCTION

Feed accounts for the largest part of the production costs in animal production, and could reach up to 70% of total costs according to the investments. Therefore, feed efficiency is a key criterion to improve the sustainability of the farm, both to improve economic balance and to reduce the environmental releases. For example the weight of the feed cost in the economic result (profit) of the farm varies strongly according to the feed conversion ratio (FCR). On average, in 2006 in France, FCR was responsible for 30 % of the variation of the feed cost margin while this was only 9% and 7% for the feed price and the rabbits’ sale price, respectively (Jentzer, 2008). Rabbit production is nearly exclusively executed in closed farms, housing both the does and the fatteners. Artificial insemination and a batch management system are widespread with a 6 weeks reproduction cycle as the most common p