Effect Of Dietary Arginine Supplement On Growth Performance, Immunity Indexes, Serum Metabolites And Liver IGF-Ⅰ MRNA Expression Of Growing Meat Rabbit

Two experiments were designed to study the effect of dietary different arginine supplement levels on production performance,nitrogen metabolism, immunity indexes,blood metabolites,serum hormone concentration and liver IGF-I mRNA expression of weaned to 3 months old meat rabbits.One hundred weaned growing meat rabbits were allocated to individual cages and randomly divided into five groups.Animals in each group were fed with a diet with the following arginine additional levels:0,0.2%,0.4%,0.6%and 0.8%in original matter basis respectively.The results were as follows.Experiment one:Dietary arginine levels significantly average dally gain (ADG) and average daily intake(ADI)(P＜0.05).The dietary arginine levels had significant influence on thymus index(P = 0.0345),but had no significant influence on spleen index(P＜0.05).With the increase of dietary arginine levels,serum IgA concentration increase significantly(P＜0.05),dietary arginine levels had no affected significantly serum IgG and IgM(P＞0.05). Dietary arginine levels affected significantly serum total protein(TP) and cholesterol(CHO) concentration(P=0.0003 and P=0.0034),and had no significant influence on serum urine nitrogen(SUN)(P＞0.05).Dietary arginine levels affected significantly serum insulin(Ins) and insulin-like growth factor-1(IGF-I) concentration(P＜0.05),and had no influence significantly serum growth factor(GH) concentration.Dietary arginine levels affected significantly the expression of IGF-I mRNA of weaned～2 month old meat rabbits(P＜0.05).In conclusion,the appropriate dietary arginine supplementation level of weaner to 2 month old growing meat rabbits was 0.2%(Tatol dietary of 1.15%).Experiment two:Dietary arginine levels did not affected significantly ADG,ADI and feed]gain(F/G)(P＞0.05).Dietary arginine levels had no significant influence on thymus index,spleen index and liver index(P＞0.05). With the increase of dietary arginine levels,serum IgA concentration increase significantly(P＜0.05),but it had no influence on serum IgG and IgM.Dietary arginine levels affected significantly serum CHO(P=0.0023) and SUN concentration(P=0.0116).Meanwhile,dietary arginine levels did not affected significantly serum TP,Ins,GH and IGF-I concentration(P＞0.05).In conclusion,there is no need to add arginine in the diet of 2-3 months old growing meat rabbit.