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ABSTRACT
The effect of flushing and hormonal treatment using prostaglandin F2α was examined in this study. Specifically, the study focused on the effect of nutritional changes on ovarian physiology, effect of the use of hormone on ovarian physiology, litter performance of flushed and hormone treated does and some reproductive traits of the does.
24 mature female rabbits were used for this study. The study was divided into two experiments. The first experiment consist of 12 rabbits which were divided into 3 groups of 4 rabbits: T1 was fed basal balance diet throughout the experiment, T2 was flushed with an improved diet for 5 days before mating and T3 was flushed for 10 days before mating. The second experiment had 12 rabbits, divided into 3 groups of 4 rabbits each: T4 was injected 0.25 ml saline and mated 48 hours post-injection (vehicle control) T5 was injected 0.25 ml PFG2αand mated 48 hours post-injection and T6 was injected 0.25 ml PFG2αand mated 72 hours post-injection. Data on ovarian physiology (number of corpus letuem and number of follicles); pregnancy performance of the doe and litter performance were collected and subjected to analysis of variance at p<0.05.
Histological examination revealed that the injection of PFG2αhas no effect on the ovarian structure and there was significant difference (p<0.05) in the number of follicles. Conception rate was significantly different in the across the experiments and ranged from 25.0% (T1) to both T1 and 75.00% (T3). Gestation days was between 29.50 days (T2) and 32.00 days (T1 and T4) but showed no statistical difference. The result also showed that litter size at weaning, litter weight and birth and litter weight and weaning were all significantly affected by both flushing and PFG2α. The mean litter weight at birth, mean litter weight at 21 days and mean litter weight at weaning were all affected (p<0.05). The study concluded that flushing had similar results with hormonal stimulation and its use as a means of increasing reproductive efficiency is highly recommended considering the negative effect of the use of exogenous treatment on human health.
