Because of the presence of antinutritional factors, the use of soybean meal in weanling pig diets is limited. Animal protein sources can be used, but their cost is high relative to plant protein sources. Therefore, it is economically advantageous to find high quality plant protein sources that weanling pigs can tolerate.

Soybean meal can be processed in various ways to remove or reduce antinutritional factors. One way is to use an alcohol extraction process to remove water-soluble carbohydrates, followed by heat treatment. This process produces soy protein concentrate. An experiment was conducted to determine effects of feeding a soy protein concentrate product called X-SOY 200 on growth performance and blood parameters in weanling pigs.

Sotak-Peper, K. M., J. C. González-Vega, and H. H. Stein. 2016. Effects of production area and microbial phytase on the apparent and standardized total tract digestibility of phosphorus in soybean meal fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 94:2397-2402. Link to full text (.pdf)

Overholt, M. F., J. E. Lowell, K. B. Wilson, R. J. Matulis, H. H. Stein, A. C. Dilger and D. D. Boler. 2016. Effects of feeding pelleted diets without or with distillers dried grains with solubles on fresh belly characteristics, fat quality, and commercial bacon slicing yields of finishing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 94:2198-2206. Link to full text (.pdf)

Rojas, O. J., E. Vinyeta, and H. H. Stein. 2016. Effects of pelleting, extrusion, or extrusion and pelleting on energy and nutrient digestibility in diets containing different levels of fiber and fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 94:1951-1960. Link to full text (.pdf)

Soy protein concentrate is produced by aqueous ethanol extraction of water-soluble carbohydrates from soybean meal, followed by heat treatment. The ethanol extraction process removes soluble carbohydrates, leaving a product that contains at least 65% crude protein. Because soy protein concentrate contains reduced levels of oligosaccharides, trypsin inhibitors, and lectins compared with conventional soybean meal, it can be used in diets for weanling pigs.

Reducing the particle size of soybean meal can increase amino acid digestibility due to the increased surface area for enzymes to work on. However, there are no known data on the effect of particle size on amino acid digestibility in soy protein concentrate. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to determine the digestibility of crude protein and amino acids in soy protein concentrate ground to three different particle sizes and to compare these values to values for soybean meal and fish meal when fed to weanling pigs.

Kiarie, E., Y. Liu, M. C. Walsh, H. H. Stein, and L. Payling. 2016. Xylanase responses on apparent ileal digestibility of nutrients, fiber and energy in growing pigs fed corn, 30% corn co-products and soybean meal based diets as influenced by microbial phytase and acclimatization period. J. Anim. Sci. 94(Suppl. 2):112-113 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)

Merriman, L. A., C. L. Walk, and H. H. Stein. 2016. The effect of microbial phytase on the apparent and standardized total tract digestibility of calcium in feed ingredients of animal origin. J. Anim. Sci. 94(Suppl. 2):110 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)

Navarro, D. M. D. L., N. W. Jaworski, and H. H. Stein. 2016. Amino acid digestibility in six sources of meat and bone meal fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 94(Suppl. 2):105 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)

Mathai, J. K., Y. Liu, and H. H. Stein. 2016. Amino acid digestibility in dairy proteins compared with plant proteins. J. Anim. Sci. 94(Suppl. 2):104 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)