THE EFFECT OF A 3X3 FULL DIALLEL CROSSING ON THE GROWTH AND REPRODUCTIVE PERFORMANCE OF THREE RABBIT BREEDS REARED WITHIN THE COASTAL SAVANNAH AGRO-ECOLOGICAL ZONE IN GHANA

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ABSTRACT Data on a full diallel cross involving three rabbit breeds and its effects on some growth and reproductive traits were studied. Data on two thousand and thirteen (2,013) rabbits comprising eight hundred and five (805) purebred bunnies kindled in 60 litters and one thousand, two hundred and five (1,205) crossbred bunnies from 86 litters bred from 2010 to 2014 in five parities were first corrected for the fixed effects of sex, season of kindling and the does‘ age using the least significant differences (lsd) before the analysis was run using the Generalised Linear Model. Of the three breeds, the Chinchilla showed superior performance in both the reproductive and growth performance while the BV X CH crossbred showed superior performance in most of the economic traits that were assessed compared to the other crosses. The BV X NZ and NZ X CH crossbreds recorded significantly (p =

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