Abstract
An experiment involving :2 growing rabbits, was con-ducted to compare the nutritive value of treated and untreated mustard oil cake. The oil cake was either treated with steam alone or steam treatment was followed by salt treatment or salt treatment was followed by iteRm treatment. The data on growth, feed consumption and feed efficiency, collected during a period of 21 days, did not reveal significant differences.
INTRODUCTION
Mustard and rape seed (Brasica family) Are quite rich sources of vegetable oils and are abut clantly grown in Pakistan, mainly for vegetable/edible production. Cakes which are left over after extraction of oil are rued in animal feeding, particularly ruminants. These oil seed cakes contain inhibiting factors like truck: acid and glucosinolates which have adverse effect on the growth of both ruminants and non-ruminants. It is lbclieved that the activity of the inhibiting factors may be reduced through chemical and heat treatments, resulting in improvement in their nutritive value. Olmu et ate (1914) observed that treatment of rape seed oil meal with hot waier and autoclaving improved the quality of rations fed to chicken. Parsada and Rao (197) also studied the feed efficiency of treated (using hot and. cold water extractions rape .5eed meal and observed that treated meal could replace groundnut meal. Le bas and Colin ( 1978 ) fed rabbits diets of outs, 'wheat and wheat bran and toasted rare seed oil treal, sunflovier oil meal and observed no difference in daily gain, feed conVersion and in weight of thyroid or liver. Clandinin of al. (1977) found that inclusion of rape seed oiI meal (with low level of giticosinolatea) in the rations of poultry even upto 10% level resulted in satisfactory results.
