Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the effect of doe reproductive performance of local and exotic dam in regards to their reproductive characteristics such as conception rate, pregnancy rate, kindling rate and litter size in a tropical environment. The study shows the interaction between reproductive performance and dam breed, parity, teat number, and fur score. A total of twenty (20) matured does and five (5) matured bucks were used for the experiment. The does were either local or exotic breed. The mating was designed such that a local breed buck was crossed with a local breed doe and an exotic breed buck with an exotic breed doe. The does were divided into 2 groups with 10 local does in a group and 10 exotic does in a group. The rabbits were fed compounded feed of 2550 Kcal/kg metabolisable energy, 18% crude protein, and 15% crude fibre. The experiment lasted for nine months and data collected were subjected to analysis of variance using the GLM procedure of SAS (1999).

The result obtained showed that there were differences between breeds in regards to doe weight at mating, doe weight after mating, doe weight at birth, gestation length, number of kits born, number of kits born alive, number of kits born dead, individual kit weight, litter weight and average litter weight at birth. From the result, it can be concluded that exotic breed have a better reproductive performance than local breed. Therefore, doe reproductive performance can be improved through breed manipulation such as cross breeding.