A highly palatable feedstuff, soybean meal is characterised by a high protein content (from 43 to 53%) and a low crude fibre content (less than 3% for the dehulled soybean meals). It has a very good amino acid balance and contains high amounts of lysine, tryptophane, threonine and isoleucine, which are often lacking in cereal grains. However, the concentration of cystine and methionine are suboptimal for monogastric animals, and methionine supplementation is necessary. Amino acid digestibility is also very high (more than 90% for lysine in pigs and poultry).
Soy meal contains oligosaccharides such as raffinose and stachyose that cannot be digested by monogastric animals, due to the lack of a specific endogenous alpha-galactosidase. Raffinose and stachyose can cause flatulence and diarrhoea that may increase the digesta passage rate, and decrease digestion and absorption of dietary nutrients. In poultry, these oligosaccharides have been shown to decrease nitrogen-corrected true metabolizable energy, fibre digestion, and transit time. Low-oligosaccharide soybean meals are now available.
About 60-70% of phosphorus in soybean meal is bound to phytic acid, which is nutritionally unavailable to monogastric animals and reduces the availability of P and other minerals. Supplementation with inorganic phosphorus is required, and the addition of phytase may alleviate the problem. Low-phytate soybeans are under development but their productivity is still low.
Soybean meal is a poor source of B vitamins and lack of B vitamin supplementation in soybean meal-based diets may cause reproductive and performance problems in sows, older pigs and hens.
Soy by-products
Modern research has led to a remarkable variety of uses for the soybean.
- Its oil can be processed into margarine and vegetarian cheese. Industrially, the oil is used as an ingredient in paints, adhesives.
- Oil can be extracted from soy by the application of pressure, which is referred to as expeller or mechanical extraction, or by solvent extraction. Most commercial feeds use solvent-extracted soybean meal.
- Soy meal serves as a high-protein meat substitute in many food products and animal feed compounding. it can also be imparted with a meatlike texture for increasing the cooked yield of ground meats.
- Soybean meal is the dominant protein supplement used in poultry diets and is the standard to which alternative protein sources are compared. Soybeans can be fed to poultry whole or as soybean meal, a by-product of oil extraction.
- Only the mechanically extracted soybean meal can be used in organic poultry diets.
- Soybean meal has a high protein content, especially when compared to other plant protein sources.
- Soybean meal also has an excellent amino acid profile that complements that of corn, the primary energy source in poultry diets.
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