Research Article
Dorota Kołodziejczyk, Stanisław Socha, Łukasz Pieńkowski, Leszek Gacek, Aldona Gontarz
Abstract. The objective of the work was to analyse rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) reproduction performance as related to rabbit age, month of birth and birth order. The animals were raised on a rabbit breeding farm located in south-eastern Poland. 400 females were subjected to analysis, of which 199 were New Zealand White rabbits and 201 were Termond White rabbits. Variance analysis revealed a statistically highly significant effect of breed and month of birth on the number of young born and raised. Birth order proved to be statistically insignificant. The average number of rabbits born and raised was, respectively, 7.39 and 6.46 for the New Zealand breed and 7.77 and 6.40 for the Termond breed. Coefficients of variation for both the breeds were found to be much higher for the number of rabbits raised than for the number of rabbits born. The highest percentage of litters for the New Zealand breed was associated with females which raised 7 and 8 young and for the Termond breed - 8 and 9 kittens. Rabbit reproduction results on the study farm can be perceived as good.
Keywords: number born, number raised rabbits, reproduction, variability
Published online: 3 May 2017
Accesses: 591
Kołodziejczyk, D., Socha, S., Pieńkowski, ., Gacek, L., Gontarz, A., (2012). The analysis of female fertility in new zealand white rabbit and termond white rabbit. Acta Sci. Pol. Zootechnica, 11(4), 61–68.