The rising demand for turkey meat in Indonesia is driving an expansion in turkey farming businesses. However, many farmers ignore the nutritional requirements of their poultry and frequently incorporate unprocessed water hyacinth into their feed, which provides low nutritional value. The present study aimed to improve the nutritional value of feed through fermentation to enhance feed quality on smallholder farms. The present study involved 180 heads of eight-week-old turkeys divided into three groups, including basic feed as a control, local feed, and fermented feed. Body weight, daily body weight gain, feed conversion, and mortality rates were measured during the study. The current results indicated that turkeys fed fermented water hyacinth had improved growth performance, as evidenced by increased body weight and daily weight gain and reduced mortality. The turkeys fed local feed did not indicate improvements in growth performance due to the use of poor-quality local feed. The fermentation method could improve the quality of feed ingredients, thereby enhancing turkey growth performance. Fermented feed given to turkeys could improve production performance by increasing body weight and daily weight gain, also decreasing feed convertion, and mortality rates during the grower period.
Sulistiyanto et al. (Mon,) studied this question.