ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Anim. Sci.
Sec. Animal Nutrition
Effects of substituting maize with sorghum, and soybean meal with canola meal on the growth performance, blood parameters and organoleptic quality of rabbits according to sex
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, University of South Africa, Florida, South Africa
- 2University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
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The main objective of this was to evaluate the impact of substituting maize with sorghum and soybean meal with canola meal on the growth performance and carcass characteristics of grower rabbits. Additionally, it further examined how sex interacts with these dietary changes to affect serum biochemical parameters and organoleptic meat quality. Forty (40) rabbit weaners (20 bucks and 20 does; 6.13 ± 6.59 g live weight) at one month old, were randomly assigned to two treatment diets. The study used two-way factorial arrangement in a complete randomized design (CRD), with each rabbit housed individually in a 0.07 m2 pen, replicated five times. Two iso-nitrogenous and iso-energetic diets were formulated as follows: a maize-soybean-based diet (control diet) = maize-soybean commercial rabbit grower diet; and a sorghum-canola-based diet (SCM) = experimentally formulated rabbit diet in which sorghum grain totally replaced maize and soybean with canola meal. Rabbits fed on the SCM diet gained more (P< 0.05) weight, with improved (P< 0.05) carcass and meat quality. Does gained more (P< 0.05) weight than bucks. The rabbits fed on the SCM diet had the highest (P< 0.05) plasma sodium and sex did not affect the serum biochemical parameters and sensory evaluation. It was concluded that replacing maize-soybean with sorghum-canola may improve growth performance regardless of the rabbit's sex, thus sorghum and canola could be used as to more expensive maize and soybean.
Keywords: Blood parameters, Canola meal, Grower diet, growth performance, Organoleptic quality, rabbit, Sex, Sorghum
Received: 16 Nov 2025; Accepted: 21 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Sebola. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nthabiseng Amenda Sebola
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