Potential Reduced Cost of Swine Diets with ExPress® Soy Meal
Production costs associated with feeding in swine operations are very high, as energy is the most expensive component of the diet. Therefore, maximizing the efficiency of the nutrients and energy present in the ingredients used in diets for pigs is crucial. Thus, the pork industry is continuously looking for feeding strategies to determine which ingredients and energy sources to use in diets while optimizing growth performance.
Adding a fat source to the traditional corn-soy swine diet is common practice, because they provide high amounts of energy and essential fatty acids to swine diets. However, fat sources are variable in composition, digestibility, energy value, and price among sources. Currently, the increased market prices of oils and fats are creating challenges for the nutritionists and the pork industry.
Alternatives, for producers to buy and integrators to make their own, are available to face those challenges using high-shear dry extrusion technology to obtain ExPress® soy meal. ExPress® soy meal is characterized by its improved amino acid digestibilities and high-metabolizable energy concentration attributed to the changes in the cell structure (physical rupturing) which liberates more available energy while leaving 6-8% residual oil content in the meal. The high nutritional value of ExPress® soy meal has been demonstrated by continuous feeding trials.
The most recent feeding trial with swine was conducted at Iowa State University to evaluate the growth performance of nursery pigs fed a diet with ExPress® soymeal without added oil vs. a diet with solvent extracted soybean meal and 2-3% soy oil. There were no differences in growth performance in Phase 2 (8-21 days) or Phase 3 (22-42 d) when SBM was substituted by ExPress®. The impact was observed in the estimated cost of the diet which was estimated ~4% lower because other sources of oil were not included. Savings when feeding ExPress® are impactful, mainly in large operations, because during Phase 3, feed intake is the greatest and feed cost is critical, accounting for more than 50% of the total feed cost in the nursery phase.
When comparing a diet with solvent-extracted soybean meal with minimal oil content, versus ExPress® from the mechanical process which leaves high-quality residual oil in the meal, it makes a noticeable difference in terms of formulating those diets efficiently and often more economically.
Key Points:
- ExPress® can replace conventional solvent SBM without significantly affecting the performance of nursery pigs.
- Swine diets can be simplified, and overall diet costs reduced by replacing fats/oils of variable composition and quality with a single ingredient – ExPress® soymeal – which contains residual oil in the meal.
