Reporton.

AHRI report No.45

Topic

Application Caesarean Section Surgery to Establish SPF Experiment Rabbits Unit

Department

Animal Drugs Inspection Branch, Animal Health Research Institute,

Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan

Author

YM Lee^＊, JR Chern, JS Yang, HL Lee, KC Hsieh, CC Chang, RS Chen

Summary

A animal house with 250 square meters’was built for rearing secondary specific pathogen free (SPF) rabbit lines to supply biomedical research in 2009. In this study, we applied Caesarean section (C-section) surgery to remove progenies from conventional breeding rabbits and utilized SPF rabbits to nurse for these progenies inside the animal facility. The body weight and productivity of breeding rabbit progenies isolated via C-section were compared with the SPF population, which were borne naturally. Our results showed that the survival rates of progenies from C-section were 90％. The body weight of progenies obtained from C-section displayed slower gains than those from natural group when they are younger than 5 months. Progeny from SPF and natural rabbits showed no statistical significance in body weight gains when they were older than 5 months. This results indicated that progenies obtained from C-section and nursed by SPF rabbits could be used to produce a specific SPF rabbit lines for biomedical research.

Keyword

Specific pathogen free, Caesarean section surgery, Biomedical research