Nutrition and Digestive Physiology 769 EVALUATION OF THE NUTRITIVE POTENTIAL OF CASSAVA (MANIHOT ESCULENTA CRANTZ) PEELS-BLOOD MEAL MIXTURE ON THE PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF FEMALE GROWING RABBITS IN THE DERIVED SAVANNAH ZONE OF NIGERIA Ojebiyi O.O.*, Farinu G.O., Babatunde G.M., Aderinola O.A. Department of Animal Production and Health, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, P.M.B. 4000, Ogbomoso, Nigeria *Corresponding author: segunojebiyi@yahoo.com ABSTRACT A feeding trail using sixty crossbred 7-9 weeks old female rabbits was conducted to investigate the effect of pre-treatment methods as well as the inclusion levels of sun dried cassava peel/blood meal mixture (3:2) on their performance characteristics. Three types of cassava peels treatment were compared. Ten experimental diets were formulated with diet 1 serving as the control without cassava peel/blood meal mixture. Diets 2, 3, and 4 had 10, 20 and 30% inclusion of ash treated cassava peels/blood meal mixture. Diets 5, 6 and 7 had 10, 20 and 30% parboiled cassava peel/blood meal mixture while diets 8, 9 and 10 had 10, 20 and 30% simply sun dried cassava peels/blood meal mixture. The rabbits were divided into 10 treatments (after weight balancing) groups of six rabbits each and assigned randomly to the ten diets with each rabbit serving as a replicate in a randomized complete block design experiment. The average initial weights were 610, 611 and 613 g or the control, ash treated, parboiled and sun dried cassava/blood meal diets as well as the 10, 20 and 30% inclusion levels. Rabbits received feed and water ad libitum during the 12 weeks of the experiment. The pre- treatment methods of cassava peels had no significant (P>0.05) effect on the average daily gain which was 8.94 g/d for the control, 8.13 g/d with ash treatment, 8.48 g/d for parboiled treatment and 8.92 g/d sun dried cassava peels. The rate of inclusion also had no significant (P>0.05) effect on the average daily gain which were 8.94, 8.92, 8.53 and 8.40 g for the control, 10, 20 and 30% levels of inclusion. The pre-treatment methods as well as the rate of inclusion did not significantly (P>0.05) affect the feed to gain ratio which were 6.16, 7.04, 7.27 and 7.15 (pre-treatments) for the control, ash treated and parboiled respectively and 6.16, and 7.45, 6.99 and 6.49 (rate of inclusion) for 10, 20 and 30% respectively. In conclusion, growing rabbits can tolerate up to 30% of either treated, parboiled or sun dried cassava peels/blood meal mixture (3:2) without negative effect on performance. Keywords: Ash treated cassava peels, Parboiled cassava peels, Sun dried cassava peels and rabbit does. INTRODUCTION Rabbits have high potential for converting feed to meat, the actualization of it depends on the quality of nutrition. Presently the prices of most conventional feed ingredients are high sequel to stiff competition for them directly by man and industrial usage. The search for alternative feed ingredients therefore becomes the focus of most animal nutritionists. Two of such alternatives are the cassava peels and blood meal. Cassava peels have been variously used in diet of rabbit, pig and broilers (Omole and Sonaiya, 1981; Agunbiade et al., 2002) while blood meal has been used to replace protein in poultry diet (Njoku, 1985). Cassava peels though abundantly available as a waste from cassava tuber processing is low in protein while blood meal in high in protein and equally available. There is paucity of information if any on the possible combination of cassava peels and blood meal in rabbit diet. These present study is design to look at three different treatments method of cassava peels