Lee, S. A., D. A. Rodriguez, and H. H. Stein. 2022 Microbial phytase impact on digestibility energy in growing pigs.  National Hog Farmer, On-line edition, Dec. 30, 2022.

Lee, S. A., D. A. Rodriguez, and H. H. Stein. 2022. Water source placement does not impact energy, nutrient utilization. National Hog Farmer, On-line edition, Oct. 12, 2022.

Depending on how facility allows pigs to drink water, considerable amounts of feeds can be wasted, which may affect digestibility of nutrients by pigs. Therefore, the objective of this experiment was to test the hypothesis that different watering options affect concentration of net energy (NE) in a corn-soybean meal diet fed to growing pigs.

Rodriguez, Diego A.,  Su A Lee, and Hans H. Stein. 2021. Growth performance and carcass quality are not different between pigs fed diets containing cold-fermented low-oil DDGS and pigs fed conventional DDGS, but pelleting improves gain to feed ratio regardless of source of DDGS. Journal of Animal Science, 2021, Vol. 99, No. 8, 1–8. doi:10.1093/jas/skab129.

Soybean meal (SBM) is the major source of amino acids in diets for swine throughout the world. However, in addition to providing indispensable amino acids to diets, SBM also provides energy to the diets. Diets are often formulated based on the net energy (NE) in each individual ingredient using a linear programming computer software. Therefore, the NE for each ingredient is important for the value the ingredient is assigned in the formulation. However, the NE for SBM that is used by most feed formulators was generated many years ago, but results of recent research indicate that current U.S. SBM may provide more NE than previously estimated, which potentially results in an increased estimation of the value of SBM in diets for pigs. There is, therefore, a need for confirming or updating the NE value for SBM. As a consequence, the objective of this experiment was to test the hypothesis that the NE in U.S. SBM fed to modern genotypes of pigs is greater than the value that is currently used in feed formulation.

Rodriguez, Diego A., Su A Lee, María R. C. de Godoy, and Hans H. Stein. 2020. Extrusion of soybean hulls does not increase digestibility of amino acids or concentrations of digestible and metabolizable energy when fed to growing pigs. Transl. Anim. Sci. 2020.4:1-9. doi: 10.1093/tas/txaa169. Link to full text.

Rodriguez, Diego A., Su A Lee, and Hans H. Stein. 2020. Digestibility of amino acids, but not fiber, fat, or energy, is greater in cold-fermented, low-oil distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) compared with conventional DDGS fed to growing pigs. Journal of Animal Science, 2020, Vol. 98, No. 10, 1–8. doi:10.1093/jas/skaa297.

Rodriguez, Diego A., Su A. Lee, Cassandra K. Jones, John K. Htoo, Hans H. Stein. 2020. Digestibility of amino acids, fiber, and energy by growing pigs, and concentrations of digestible and metabolizable energy in yellow dent corn, hard red winter wheat, and sorghum may be influenced by extrusion. Animal Feed Science and Technology 268 (2020) 114602. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2020.114602.

When soybeans are crushed, the oil may be solvent extracted and the resulting defatted soybeans are known as soybean meal (SBM). However, the oil may also be mechanically expelled from the beans and the defatted soybeans resulting from this procedure is an ingredient known as soybean expellers. The expelling procedure is less efficient in removing oil from the beans and soybean expellers, therefore, contain more residual oil than SBM. Soybean expellers can be produced using different technologies, and a new procedure involving a patented high shear dry extrusion procedure was recently developed (Insta-Pro International, Des Moines, IA). There are however, no data for the digestibility of amino acids (AA) in the soybean expellers that are produced from this procedure. Therefore, the objective of this research was to test the hypothesis that the standardized ileal digestibility (SID) of crude protein (CP) and AAis greater in soybean expellers than in SBM when fed to growing pigs.