Chhay Ty et al., 2013. Livest. Res. Rural Dev., 25 (1): 12

The aim of this experiment was to evaluate foliage of Amaranth as replacement for Water spinach as the basal diet of growing rabbits. Twenty crossbred rabbits with an initial weight of 0.840.08 kg were allocated to a 2*5 factorial arrangement in a completely randomized design with 2 replications. The first factor was level of Amaranth replacing Water spinach with ratios (DM basis) of: (0:100, 25:75, 50:50, 75:25 and 100:0%). The second factor was supplementation with paddy rice (20 g/day or none). Amaranth and water spinach foliages were hung separately inside of the cage. Paddy rice was fed in the feed trough. The rabbits were weighed every 10 days during the 80 days of the experiment. There were curvilinear decreases in growth rate and poorer feed conversion as Amaranth foliage replaced Water spinach as the source of forage. Growth performance was improved by supplementation with paddy rice, but this did not compensate for the negative effects on growth and feed conversion attributable to the Amaranth. In the diet with Water spinach as the only forage the effect of the paddy rice was to increase growth rate by 25% but feed conversion was poorer by 24%, thus in practice there would appear to be little economic incentive to feed paddy rice when Water spinach is offered as the basal diet.