Evaluation of Growth Performance and Haematology of Weaner Rabbits Fed Varied Levels of Pawpaw (Carica papaya) Leaf Meal

Utilization of forages and leaf meals in livestock feeding is a strategy to reduce cost of production and provide affordable animal protein for the fast-growing human population. This experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of feeding pawpaw leaf meal on growth performance and haematology of weaner rabbits. A total of 24 mongrel weaner rabbits of 0.55±0.28 kg in weight were randomly assigned to four treatment groups of six rabbits in a completely randomised design. Treatment one served as control diet with 0% pawpaw leaf meal while treatments two, three and four contained 5 %, 10 % and 15 % pawpaw leaf meal respectively. The study lasted for 56 days with ad libitum feeding. The animals were initially weighed, housed per replicates in pen units and weighed weekly thereafter. Feed intake, weight gain and feed conversion ratio were calculated and at the end of the experiment, blood was collected into sterile bottles containing ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) as anticoagulant. The blood samples were analysed for packed cell volume (PCV), Red blood cell (RBC), Haemoglobin (Hb), White blood cell (WBC) and Mean Corpuscular Haemoglobin Concentration (MCHC), Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV) were calculated. Growth performance result revealed that feed intake decreased (P<0.05) with the inclusion of pawpaw leaf meal but did not affect weight gain and feed conversion ratio. Pawpaw leaf meal improved haematological parameters (P<0.05) with best results from the group fed 5%. It can be concluded that moderate inclusion of pawpaw leaf meal in rabbit diets did not affect growth performance and haematology of weaner rabbits.