Soybean meal is the most common source of protein in swine diets in the United States. However, conventional soybean meal contains antinutritional factors such as antigenic proteins, oligosaccharides, lectins, and trypsin inhibitors that limit its use in diets fed to weanling pigs. Methods of processing soybean meal to remove antinutritional factors have been developed. These include enzyme treatment, fermentation, and the removal of soluble carbohydrates.
Like soybean meal, rapeseed products are usually not fed to weanling pigs due to the presence of glucosinolates and relatively high concentrations of fiber in these products. Previous research has shown that fermentation of soybean meal can reduce antinutritional factors and fiber concentrations. An experiment was conducted to determine the apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of energy and concentrations of digestible (DE) and metabolizable (ME) energy in four sources of processed soybean products, conventional soybean meal, conventional 00-rapeseed expellers, and in a fermented mixture of co-products including 00-rapeseed expellers, wheat bran, potato peel, and soy molasses.