Reducing ammonia and GHG emissions from rabbit rearing through a feed additive produced from green urban residues

Abstract The present paper proposes a new strategy, based on the use of a new healthy animal diet additive obtained from urban biowaste, to reduce the environmental impact from livestock production. The diet supplement is a water soluble biopolymer (SB) obtained from urban gardening wastes. The paper reports the results of a case study in which 35 days old rabbits were fed a conventional diet as control and with a test diet made up of the conventional diet and 0.05-1 % SB. Urine and faeces were collected, stored for 18 days at room temperature to simulate farm storage, and the resulting gaseous emissions were analysed. The manure from the animals fed the 0.25 % SB diet produced significantly lowest emissions (p