European ring-test on in vivo determination of digestibility in rabbits: reproducibility of a reference method in comparison with domestic laboratory procedures

• Autores: J.M. Pérez, C. Cervera, L. Falcão e Cunha, L. Maertens, María Jesús Villamide Díaz, G. Xiccato
• Localización: World Rabbit Science, ISSN-e 1989-8886, ISSN 1257-5011, Vol. 3, Nº. 4, 1995, págs. 171-178
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • A collaborative study involving six European laboratorios from five countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain) was undertaken to assess the reproducibility of an European standard method for in vivo determination of diet digestibility and to compare the results obtained with domestic procedures. The European method was carried out on 49-day-old rabbits caged individually and fed ad libitum; it included an adaptation period of 7 days followed by a collection period of 4 days. The digestibility coefficients of dry matter (dDM), organic matter (dOM), energy (dE), crude protein (dCP), crude fibre (dCF), and the digestible energy (DE) content of two diets were measured in each laboratory by both standard and domestic methods. On the whole, 260 digestive balances were carried out on the basis of 8 to 10 rabbits mínimum per diet per each method. In comparison with the laboratory procedures the standard method improved the reproducibility notably for the digestibility of dry matter (among-laboratory standard deviation: SL= 0.70 vs 0.92), crude fibre (SL=2.49 vs 5.02) and DE content (SL= 0.18 vs 0.26 MJ/kg DM).