This experiment was conducted to study the effects of first feed intake time on growth performance,nutrient apparent metabolic rate and intestinal digestive enzyme activities in broilers.Two thousand five hundred and twenty LingNan Yel-low broilers were randomly allotted to seven treatments with six replicates of 60 each.The only experimental factor was the first feed intake time which was 18,24,30,36,42,48 and 54 hours after hatching.The whole experiment lasted for 21 days.During the whole period,the 30h treatment had the best BW and ADG(P < 0.05),followed by the 24h group perfor-mance optimization.Also,the 30h group was observed to have the best apparent metabolic rate for ether extract(P < 0.05)and CP(P < 0.05)and the highest activities of amylase,lipase and trypsin in small intestine.The 24h group was second on-ly to the 30h group in terms of the above two measures.These results indicated that the appropriate first feeding time of LingNan Yellow broilers was 24 to 30 hours after hatching.