Rabbits are small mammals that belong to the family Lepopridae having approximately 305 breeds in the word. The European rabbits are familiar throughout the world and present in every continent except Antarctica. These rabbits are considered as a wild prey animal, domesticated form of livestock and pet mostly used as food, clothing, a companion, an experimental object for the medical study and a source of artistic inspiration.
Rabbit is treated as “Micro-Livestock” and can be a great source of food production to meet the increasing demand. The development of rabbit farming is a strategic breakthrough in the field of animal husbandry to accelerate the animal protein self-sufficiency.
A research conducted by Simonova et al. (2010) stated that rabbit meat has an advantage in quality over pork, beef, and chicken withlower and low-fat content (1.37-3.53 g 100 g–1) and higher meat protein content (21.37-21.80 g 100 g–1). In another research work, Nuriyasa et al. (2018) pointed out that community demand for meat is growing rapidly and it’s a potential opportunity for the development of rabbits. Rabbit farming is appropriate to be developed in rural areas with a small business scale to meet the needs of the animal protein in addition to increase community income.
Rabbit livestock business is simple. It is easy to implement and is expected to meet some of the animal protein needs of the community. Rabbit livestock is one of the livestock commodities that can produce high-quality meat. The structure of the meat is finer than that of other meats and the color and shape resemble chicken meat. Production cost of the rabbit farming 80 % depends on the feed given to them means it depends on the feed that make this farming profitable.
Biorefinery is a technology that provide suitable alternative for obtaining high-value products by using unconventional raw materials, such as agro-industrial waste. Banana peels (Musa cv) are an agro-industrial waste and can be used as a rabbit feed ingredient.
Pakistan Journal of Nutrition presented a recent research to focus on the increase of economic value of banana peels and produce low-cost rabbit feed. They researchers observed that the use of a banana peels level of 9% results in higher feed consumption, feed digestibility, growth and carcass weight of local rabbits than those observed with the use of 6%, 3% and no banana peels. So, banana peels can be considered as an inexpensive and full of healthy feed for rabbit farming.
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