Natural nutraceutical feed additives as antibiotic alternatives in rabbit production

As rabbits’ production is one of the most profitable sectors involved in contributing high-quality animal products, finding promising strategies to enhance this production is crucial, particularly under stressful circumstances. Antibiotics were widely employed as growth stimulants in animal production, however their use has been banned since 2006 within the European Union. Therefore, searching for ecologically friendly alternatives to enhance animal’s health and ensure safe and superior quality of animal products is urgent. This review article spotlighted on the use of some nutraceutical feed additives, emphasizing probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics, phytobiotics, acidifiers, enzymes, and algae, and their effects on the general health status of rabbits in various productive categories. These natural substitutes show growth promoting, antimicrobial, antioxidant, immunomodulatory, and hypocholesterolemic impacts. Nutraceuticals also have the ability to stimulate the natural gut microbial eubiosis and homeostasis, and consequently improve digestibility, productive efficiency, and carcass quality of rabbits. Besides, they showed antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immuno-stimulant effects. Nevertheless, the efficacy of these natural nutraceutical alternatives depends on the used strain and the chemical structure of the product, and the produced secondary metabolites, as well as health status, age, and productive category of the fed rabbits. Limited number of such studies have been done on rabbits, therefore, further research work is needed to explain the pathogenesis and get recommended doses of these nutraceuticals at the different production cycles of rabbits.