Rabbit meat is considered as an economic source of white meat, increasing its production
is limited by the buck fertility, since one rabbit can be used to inseminate up to 15
female. The aim of the current study is to enhance male rabbit fertility by using dietary
antioxidants including Aloe vera gel (AVG) and pomegranate peels (PP). In a 60 days
experiment, 48 V-Line 5-month-old rabbit bucks of average body weight (2,300 ± 20)
kg were allocated into four dietary treatments (n = 12/group) as follow: CON (fed
on control diet), ALOE (received AVG in drinking water; 500 mg/L drinking water),
POM3 (fed on basal diet + 3% of pomegranate) and POM5 (fed on basal diet + 5% of
pomegranate). Semen samples were collected at d30 and d60 of the experiment and
used for analysis of semen quality. Sexual behaviour was reported in terms of latency
to first mating and ejaculation interval. At the end of the experiment, six bucks were
euthanized from each group, blood samples were collected and used for testosterone
level determination and testicular tissue samples were collected and used for key
antioxidant and spermatogenesis enzymes assessment, and testes histopathological
evaluation. The UNIVARIATE procedures of SAS 9.4 were used to analyse the data,
significance was declared at p ≤.05. PP supplementation improved percentage of progressive
motile sperms while AVG negatively impacted it (p = .04), sperm concentration
and metabolically active sperm cells were the highest in PP and lowest in ALOE
supplemented bucks (p = .01 and .01; respectively). Testicular alkaline phosphatase
(ALP) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) decreased in AVG supplemented group (p =
.01 and .02; respectively). From our findings, AVG in its fresh form decreased fertility
of rabbit bucks, while PP is potent fertility boosting for rabbit bucks. |
