Introduction
During the commercial livestock husbandry of rabbits and as well as in pet groups problems always occure with infections of stomach and intestine. There are different kinds of diarrhea known: first diarrhoea light (brown-yellow, mucous), second diarrhoea dark (grey-black, sticky) and third morbidity, which can be recognized by a swelled stomach and apathy. Diarrhoea mainly occures within the first three weeks after weaning. These infections mean not only an endangering of the health of the whole population but also high mortality. The natural mortality rate for rabbits in husbandry is about 10 %. But mostly the mortality rate of rabbits range between 20 % and 50 % or more. To stabilise the health in the herd good livestock management is necessary.
In former times the health of the population was stabilazed by antibacterial growth promotors. Because of new guidelines for feed additives the use of these growth promoters have been forbitten. So phytogenic substances like digestarom® with their stabelizing influence on the instestine became a focus of public discussion. During intensive research digestarom® 1315 was developed. This is an improved version of digestarom® 1314 with additional phytogenic extracts, which inhibit diarrhoea. The effect of these feed additives were investigated in two separate experiments with rabbits (race New Zeeland White). In the fist experiment two groups fed with and without digestarom® 1314 were investigated. In the second experiment feed additives 1314 and 1315 were comperad with each other and with a control group, which got no digestarom.
For the frist investigation pregnant rabbits were separated in two groups on the 28th day after artificial insemination. From the 29th day on animals were fed with feed with and without digestarom® 1314. At four weeks of age offspring were separated into 40 animals per group and were fed the same feed as their mothers.
In the second trial the mothers from the experiment before were used again. On the 28th day after artificial insemination they were split into three groups. The control group got the usual feed and the other two got feed with digestarom® 1314 and digestarom® 1315, respectively.
In both experiments feed intake, body weight, appearance of diarrhea and mortality rate were measured for mothers and offspring. So it was possible to quantify the acceptance of feed with digestarom® and the health of the herd.
In general it was observed that mothers and progenies accepted the feed with the phytogenic additives. The change of the feed in the third part of pregnancy had no influence on birth, losses during birth and weight of the progenies.
At the beginning of the experiments mothers had the same body weight. During the time from birth up to the third week mothers with digestarom® 1314 showed a higher body weight (5082 g ± 758) than mothers from control (4766 g ± 735). This was also observed in the second experiment, where animals with digestarom® 1315 had a body weight of 5310 g ± 666 and those from control only 4883 g ± 526. In conclusion digestarom®, which constists of phytogenic substances, had a positive influence on the body weight of mothers during suckling time, which means they had a better condition to suckle. But this had no influence on the body weight of progenies during suckling time and after weaning.
More important was the reduction of both kinds of diarrhoea and morbidity within the populations of progenies fed with digestarom®. This was observed in both experiments (Graph 1 and 2). Digestarom® 1315, which had more substances to inhibit diarrhoea, showed better results than digestarom® 1314. Digestarom® 1314 group again showed better results than the controls. The reduction in the digestarom groups was about 70-90% compared with controls!
In addition the length of diarrhoea was reduced from 2,5 days down to 1 day in the group fed with digestarom® 1315.
 - Graph 1 Amount of infected progenies in Experiment 1
 - Graph 2 Amount of infected progenies in Experiment 2
The feed intake of the mothers was slighly higher in the groups with digestarom® than in the group without. This let to the better body weight during suckling time as announced above. The feed intake of the progenies was the same with the controls. The feed expenditure for the whole time from birth till four weeks after weaning was not influenced by the phytogenic additives.
The mothers as well as the offspring accepted the feed mixed with digestarom®. At some time point the rabbits in the digestarom® groups ate more than the control groups, which means that the feed had a better taste. The higher feed intake led to better body weight stability of the mothers and a slightly higher body weight of the progenies. Mothers fed with digestarom® went in the next reprodction phase in better health condition than mothers from control. Again the feed expenditure was not influenced by phytogenic additives.
More significant was the reduction of diarrhoea after weaning in the offspring groups. There digestarom® 1315 with additional substances, which inhibit diarrhea, showed better results regarding appearance and length of diarrhoea than the ?old version? digestarom® 1314. If there is the same amount of progenies at weaning time, then digestarom® would reduce the mortality caused by diarrhoea and at the end more rabbits are left to sale. The decrease of morbidity led to an decreased risc of infection of the total herd and increased productivity of the livestock.
Ronald Krieg, Niederwünsch Mai 2006
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