Effect of different chromium supplementations on hormonal profiles, growth performance and seminal characteristics in NZW rabbits at sexual puberty age
Submitted: 2025-05-11
|Accepted: 2025-08-05
|Published: 2025-12-29
Copyright (c) 2025 Anhar I. Elhanafy, Sana S. Emara, Sherif Y. Eid, Ahmed K. Sharaf, Ismail A. Ali, Omar A. Ahmed-Farid
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Keywords:
trivalent and nano-Cr, hormone levels, sperm, growth traits, carcass weight, rabbit
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Abstract:
This work studied the effects of nano-chromium (nano-Cr) and trivalent chromium (Cr III) on hormones, semen quality and growth traits in NZW rabbits at sexual puberty age. Thirty-six male rabbits (6-wk-old; 1200±4 g IBW) were penned into 3 groups (12/each): control, Cr (III) as CrCl3 (0.5 mg/animal/wk) and nano-Cr (0.5 mg/animal/wk). The doses were administered individually as oral sips and the study lasted 100 d, until the rabbits reached 20 wk of age. Both Cr (III) and nano-Cr treatments increased T3 and T4 levels with values of 1.22, 1.16, 2.85 and 2.72 ng/mL; P<0.01, respectively, compared to the control. Testosterone and IGF-1 concentrations were highest in the nano-Cr group, reaching 1.22 ng/mL and 0.84 ng/mL, respectively. The Cr (III) group showed the highest final body weight (3502 g), total gain (2367 g) and average daily gain (23.67 g/d), along with the best carcass weight (2710 g) and dressing percentage (77.38%). Reproductive performance was most improved by nano-Cr, which increased sperm concentration (71.87×10⁶/mL), ejaculate volume (0.86 mL), progressive motility (64.17%) and the percentage of live sperm (91.30%), while reducing libido by 6.85 s and nearly doubling the total viable sperm per ejaculate from 28.93×10⁶ to 56.41×10⁶. In conclusion, nano-Cr at 0.5 mg/animal/wk seems to be a more appropiate supplement for boosting reproductive traits in male rabbits at sexual puberty age, while Cr (III) (0.5 mg/ animal/wk) seems to be more useful for meat production purposes.
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