2. Material and methods
2.1. Diets
Three pelleted diets were used in the current study. Diet F was characterised by a high level of highly-digestible fibre [HDF, calculated as the sum of neutral detergent soluble fibre (NDSF) and hemicelluloses; 384 g per kg dry matter (DM)]. Diet S was formulated mainly replacing part of this HDF (−140 g per kg DM) with starch (+101 g per kg DM) and ether extract (+23 g per kg DM) (Table 1). A medicated commercial rabbit diet (including 100 ppm of zinc–bacitracin; Bacipremix 50, Pintaluba, Spain) was used as a control (diet C). The diets had similar crude protein (CP) and acid detergent fibre (ADF) contents (178 and 217 g per kg DM, respectively), and included 66 ppm of robenidine (Cycostat 66 G, Alpharma, Belgium) as coccidiostat.