RESEARCH ARTICLES
INFLUENCE OF BREED AND MONTH OF MATING ON THE GESTATION LENGTH AND LITTER SIZE AT BIRTH AMONG BROILER RABBITS IN KERALA
P. Nandakumar and Marykutty Thomas
Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences.1999. 30:69-72.
Open Access
Copyright: © 1999 P. Nandakumar et.al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Effect of breed and month of mating on the litter size at birth and gestation length in three temperate broiler breeds of rabbits namely, New Zealand White, Soviet Chinchilla and Grey Giant during different months of mating from January to December was analysed. Month of mating and breed had significant effects on the litter size at birth. The highest litter size at birth was during September with a mean of 6.80. The results are indicative of a reduction in litter size as the ambient temperature increased. The results were also suggestive of an effect of thermal stress, which had a depressant effect on the litter size at birth in the three breeds studied. The effect of breed was not significant in gestation length in broiler rabbits. However, a highly significant effect (P £ 0.01) on gestation length was found to be exerted by month of mating with the shortest gestation length inSeptember and longest gestation length in March.
