Branching Out: Rabbit Models Provide Evidence for the Use of a Willow Cultivar (<i>Salix miyabeana</i>) as a Suitable Forage Material for Monogastric Herbivores in Zoos
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We assessed the suitability of a willow cultivar for monogastric herbivores in zoos using a rabbit model. Thirty-six male New Zealand White × Californian rabbits at 5 weeks of age were provided with bark and leaf material from a willow cultivar, Salix miyabeana (SX61), in one of four treatments for 6 weeks: UC (unrestricted control of pelleted diet); RC (restricted control of pelleted diet); TL (restricted pellets + fresh willow leaf material); and TB (restricted pellets + fresh willow bark material). Daily feed intake and weekly weights were recorded. Fasted blood samples were taken between 8:00 and 11:00 h, and blood biochemistry and acute phase protein (APP) were quantified at the start and end of the study. After the 6-week study period, rabbits were euthanized, and liver and kidney weights were obtained to assess hepatocellular damage. Blood biochemistry results were mainly within reference ranges and suggest a lack of toxicity or cellular damage due to feeding different amounts of willow ingredients. Greater weight gain was observed in the UC group when compared to the RC (p < 0.01), TB, and TL (p < 0.05) groups at the end of the treatment period. Total dry matter (DM) intake was greater in both TB and TL treatment groups when compared to the RC group but lower than the UC group (p < 0.05) across the treatment period. At the end of the study, phosphorus, magnesium, glucose, and AST were lower in the RC group when compared to all other treatment groups (p < 0.05) with a greater blood urea nitrogen than the TL and TB groups (p < 0.01). The TL group had greater blood potassium concentrations and a lower Na:K ratio than the UC and TB groups (p < 0.01). No differences were observed in the APP response over time and among groups; only fibrinogen was greater in the RC compared to the TB group (p < 0.05). The relative liver weight was higher in the UC group when compared to TB (p < 0.05). Given these results, willow bark and leaves at a high dietary inclusion can be considered safe and effective forage materials for monogastric herbivores in zoos.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".