D
uring the early ages of growing turkeys, they suffer from eyesight weakness, which delays learning and detection of the offered feed; resulting in adverse effects on their growth rate and marketing age. Consequently, a total number of 180 one-day old indigenous Egyptian turkey chicks were dedicated in this study for evaluating the impacts of using different attracting colors and forms of the offered diet on their growth performance and carcass traits. The birds were allocated in six equal treatments (each of 3 replicates), which were corresponded to non-colored (NM), red (RM) and green (GM) feed in mash form (M) and non-colored, red and green pelleted feed (NP, RP and GP, respectively). The obtained results indicated that colored and pelleted feed affected significantly final body weight, body weight gain, feed consumption & conversion, body temperature, mortality rate and meat quality (juiciness and ether extract %) in local turkey. However, there were no significant differences among treatments in percentages of carcass cut-up parts, plumage conditions, physical and chemical traits of meat (fattiness, water holding capacity, pH, moisture and protein). Finally, considering the economic efficiency as well as the other obtained results, it was observed that the local turkey prefer green mash feed and pellets over non colored and red feed. Consequently, feeds for turkey chicks should be in green mash or pellets form during growing period.