Impacts of supplementing growing rabbit diets with whey powder and citric acid on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, meat and bone analysis, and gut health

AMB Express

Table 5 The effect of graded levels of whey with addition of citric acid on intestinal and muscle PH, and femur bone analysis on fresh basis

Parameters	T1	T2	T3	T4	T5	P value
Intestinal pH	8.15 ± 0.25^a	7.36 ± 0.13^b	7.68 ± 0.15^b	7.38 ± 0.17^b	6.66 ± 0.18^c	≤ 0.001
Muscle pH	6.88 ± 0.12	7.13 ± 0.09	7.04 ± 0.07	7.07 ± 0.07	7.12 ± 0.11	0.357
Femur bone analysis (%)
Ash	38.08 ± 1.81	38.91 ± 2.15	39.11 ± 0.78	37.83 ± 0.93	39.37 ± 0.45	0.916
Ca	3.12 ± 0.12^c	3.25 ± 0.22^c	4.32 ± 0.08^b	4.88 ± 0.19^ab	5.05 ± 0.28^a	≤ 0.001
P	2.90 ± 0.16^b	3.15 ± 0.25^b	3.82 ± 0.07^a	4.03 ± 0.13^a	4.20 ± 0.17^a	≤ 0.001

T1, basal diet with no additives; T2, basal diet supplemented with citric acid (10 g/kg) and no whey; T3, T2 + whey powder (7.5 g/kg); T4, T2 + whey powder(15 g/kg); T5, T2 + whey powder (22.5 g/kg)
^a–cMeans within the same row carrying different superscripts are significantly different at (P ≤ 0.05)