Effect of dietary fat level and source on performance and immune system response of turkeys

Omidi, ShahryarMohit, ArdeshirHossein-Zadeh, Navid Ghavi

An experiment was conducted to determine effects of different levels and sources of fats in diets on growth performance, carcass characteristics and immune response of turkeys during four periods (0-21, 22 to 42, 43 to 63 and 64 to 70 days of age). A completely randomized design with five treatments, six replicates and eight B.U.T.6 turkey chickens per replicate was used. Treatments included: Control diet, diet containing 2.5% of soybean oil, diet containing 2.5% fat supplement, diet containing 5% soybean oil, diet containing 5% fat supplement. The results showed that using 5% of soybean oil increased average daily gain of turkeys (89.04 g) throughout the experimental period (0-70 days) compared with the control group (81.11 g; p 0.05). It can be concluded that supplementing diet with 5% soybean oil improved the performance of turkeys.

1. Fat supplement
2. Average daily gain
3. Carcass quality
4. Immunity
5. Feed intake