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Improving The ‘Gold Standard’

Nov 05, 2015
By Randy Mitchell,
Vice-President of Technical Services at Perdue Farms 
 
Four ways to increase the value of soybean meal for poultry processors 
 
Chicken is America’s favorite source of protein, and soybean meal is the favorite protein source of America’s broiler chickens.  Broilers account for about 35 percent of domestic soybean meal consumption.
 
OB USB 110916-0424
 
Why do chickens love soybean meal so much?  The amino acid profile balances well with corn which is especially important in all-vegetable diets. Plus the digestibility of those amino acids is relatively high.
 
But poultry nutritionists need to consider several factors concerning the ingredient when formulating diets.
 
Here are four important things for farmers to know about other factors that impact meal demand and soybean profitability:
 
1. Dietary Energy
 
While soybean meal is a preferred source of protein, it has relatively low dietary energy for poultry compared with other high protein substitutes .  This is because many of the carbohydrates in soybean meal are not easily digested by the birds.  Half of the free sugars in soybean meal are in forms that are indigestible to poultry.  Plant breeders have selected soybeans with lower levels of the indigestible sugars, raffinose and stachyose, and replaced them with more digestible sugars.
 
2. Collaboration
 
The United Soybean Board’s (USB) Animal Nutrition Working Group, a group of animal nutritionists advising USB on how to increase soybean meal utilization through improved nutrition, has identified these varieties as a major opportunity to improve meal value in poultry.  The group is actively working with plant breeders and poultry researchers to determine how best to utilize this technology to bring more value to poultry producers and soybean farmers.
 
3. Processing
 
The processing method is the next consideration.  The most common method is solvent extraction, but a less common method is mechanical extraction.  The meal products that result from these methods are very different in nutritive value.  Solvent-extracted meal is usually higher in protein and lower in residual oil than meal that undergoes mechanical extraction.  Whether the soybeans are dehulled or the hulls are left in the meal also has a big influence on protein and energy values.
 
4. Proper Heat Treatment
 
Another positive attribute of soybean meal for poultry is the excellent digestibility of the amino acids compared with other protein sources.  The key to the amino acid digestibility for soybean meal is getting the proper amount of heat treatment.  Soybeans contain anti-nutritive proteins, called trypsin inhibitors, that impair the digestion of protein.  Heat treating soybean meal after oil extraction deactivates these proteins.
 
Over-heating soybean meal reduces the availability of amino acids. Lysine, a critical amino acid due to its role in muscle development, is particularly sensitive to over-heating.  Under-heating soybean meal means the remaining trypsin inhibitors will hinder protein digestion, resulting in poor bird growth.
 
Most U.S. soybean processors using solvent extraction have fine-tuned the time and temperature combination to minimize problems with trypsin inhibitors while maintaining optimum amino acid digestibility.  Heat treatment in mechanically-extracted meal is more variable and higher trypsin inhibitor content is common, so extra attention is warranted when using this type of meal
 
You probably don’t often think about the meal made from your soybeans once you’ve dropped them off at the elevator, but the animal nutritionists who purchase your soybeans do.
That’s why it’s important for soybean farmers to know about some of the factors that impact my industry, the ultimate customers of their soybean meal.
 
Randy Mitchell is the Vice-President of Technical Services at Perdue Farms with responsibility for the company’s Poultry Nutrition and Live Research.  He is also a volunteer Member of USB’s Animal Nutrition Working Group, which provides critical insights that increase soybean meal utilization. 
 
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