The Detrimental Effect of Dietary Ginger Rhizome Powder Supplementation on Reproductive Performance of Pubertal Rabbit Bucks

Thirty six crossbred rabbit bucks aged 6 months were used to study the detrimental effects of supplementing ginger rhizome powder (GRP) on reproductive performance of pubertal rabbits. The rabbit bucks were randomly divided into four experimental treatments A1, B1, C1 and D1 of nine animals and was further replicated three times with three animals per replicate in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD). The animals were fed commercial grower rabbit diet which was supplemented with GRP at the rate of 0g/kg, 5g/kg, 10g/kg and 15g/kg feed respectively for 10 weeks. Prior to the first six weeks of the study, a two week period of training was used to train the bucks to ejaculate artificially into artificial vagina. Semen was collected between 8.00 am and 9.00 am and taken the laboratory for analysis within 30 minutes of collection. Data collected were subjected to analysis of variance. Dietary supplementation with GRP revealed that live sperm cell (%), dead sperm cell (%) as well as live : dead sperm cell ratios differed significantly (pandlt;0.05) among the groups. There were also significant (pandlt;0.05) differences in sperm motility between rabbit bucks in group A1 (68.48%) and those in group D1 (53.34%). Libido scores were similar (pandgt;0.05) among the treatment groups. The results of this study indicated that dietary inclusion of ginger rhizome powder supplementation at 15g per kg feed had deleterious effect on sperm motility and % live sperm cells of pubertal rabbit bucks.