Soybean meal fed to pigs undergoes heat treatment to destroy trypsin inhibitors and other antinutritional factors that impair the digestion of protein and thus reduce performance. However, heat treatment can damage nutrients as well. In particular, the Maillard reaction reduces amino acid digestibility by combining amino acids with sugars to produce biologically unavailable compounds.

An experiment was conducted to determine the digestibility of amino acids in pigs fed soybean meal that had been heat treated in varying ways and for varying times. Conventional soybean meal was divided into four batches. One batch was not heated; one was autoclaved at 125°C for 15 minutes; one was autoclaved at 125°C for 30 minutes; and the last one was oven dried at 125°C for 30 minutes. Ten growing barrows were fed a total of five different diets. The experimental diets contained 40% each of the four different soybean meals being tested. An N-free diet was also formulated and fed to measure the basal endogenous loss of protein and amino acids.

Meat and bone meal (MBM) is a product of the rendering industry composed primarily of the offal and bones of slaughtered livestock, fat from unmarketable animal tissues, unsellable retail meat products, and whole condemned carcasses (excluding hair, blood, hooves, horns, and contents of the gastrointestinal tract).  MBM is traditionally used as an animal protein source in swine diets, but because of its high concentrations of calcium and phosphorus, it can also replace inorganic phosphates in swine diets.

The proportions of soft tissue and bone in different sources of MBM can vary widely. Because mineral digestibility differs in bone and soft tissue, the variation in composition of MBM sources leads to a variation in mineral digestibility values.

An experiment was conducted to 1) determine the apparent (ATTD) and standardized (STTD) total tract digestibility of phosphorus and the ATTD of calcium in 8 different sources of MBM,  2) estimate variation among MBM sources, and 3) develop equations to predict the concentrations of digestible phosphorus and calcium in MBM.

Kil, D. Y. and H. H. Stein. 2011. Dietary soybean oil and choice white grease improve apparent ileal digestibility of amino acids in swine diets containing corn, soybean meal, and distillers dried grains with solubles. Rev. Colomb. Cienc. Pecu. 24:248-253. Link to full text (.pdf)

Newman, D. J., E. K. Harris, A. N. Lepper, E. P. Berg, and H. H. Stein. 2011. Effects of pea chips on pig performance, carcass quality and composition, and palatability of pork. J. Anim. Sci. 89:3132-3139. Link to full text (.pdf)

Dried Fermentation Biomass (Ajinomoto Heartland LLC) is a co-product of the commercial production of lysine. Peptone 50 and PEP2+ (TechMix LLC) are co-products of heparin production for the human pharmaceutical industry. The latter two products are produced from hydrolyzed pig intestines that are co-dried with a vegetable protein (Peptone 50) or enzymatically processed vegetable proteins (PEP2+). These co-products are possible replacements for fish meal in weanling pig diets.

An experiment was conducted to measure the digestibility of energy and the concentration of digestible (DE) and metabolizable energy (ME) in Dried Fermentation Biomass, Peptone 50, PEP2+, and fish meal fed to weanling pigs.

Stein, H. H. 2011. Standardized total tract digestibility (STTD) of phosphorus. Pages 47-52 in Proc. Midwest Swine Nutr. Conf. Indianapolis, IN, Sep. 8, 2011. Link to full text (.pdf)

Almeida, F. N., G. I. Petersen, and H. H. Stein. 2011. Digestibility of amino acids in corn, corn co-­products, and bakery meal fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 89(E-Suppl. 1):441 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)

Boucher, S. E., S. Calsamiglia, M. D. Stern, C. M. Parsons, H. H. Stein, C. G. Schwab, K. W. Cotanch, J. W. Darrah, and J. K. Bernard. 2011. Method evaluation for determining digestibility of rumen undegraded amino acids in blood meal. J. Anim. Sci. 89(E-Suppl. 1):388 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)

Cervantes-Pahm, S. K. and H. H. Stein. 2011. Metabolizable energy and digestibility of carbohydrates in cereal grains fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 89(E-Suppl. 1):332-333 (Abstr.) Link to abstract (.pdf)