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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
The present study was conducted to analyze the carcass characteristics of New Zealand White rabbits reared under tropical conditions of India. For this study, a total of 38 male rabbits of 4 – 5 months age selected randomly from Post Graduate Research Institute in Animal Sciences, TANUVAS, Tamil Nadu, which were fed with concentrate (16% CP) and Desmanthus fodder during the rearing period. The animals were slaughtered by cutting the jugular veins and carotid arteries, various carcass parameters and cut up parts weight were recorded and analyzed as per the standard methods. In the present study, the mean live weight at slaughter and carcass weight observed were 1772.63 ± 40.65 g and 911.92 ± 21.05 g respectively with a dressing percentage of 51.55 ± 0.56 and an edible to inedible ratio of 1.69 ± 0.04. The average value of various cut up parts such as fore limb weight, thorax weight, loin weight, abdominal flap weight, rump and hind limb weight and shank weight were 141.91 ± 4.37 g, 177.44 ± 4.96 g, 168.74 ± 4.98 g, 67.31 ± 2.05 g, 292.30 ± 6.95 g and 51.13 ± 1.29 g respectively which shows high correlation with live weight especially the prime cut up parts such as loin (0.805), rump and hind limb (0.908) with a significance level of 0.01. From the study, it is evident that among the various foragers like sheep, goat, cattle and rabbit, the dressing percentage of the rabbits seemed to be high with better meat to bone ratio.