Soybean meal is a high quality source of protein for swine diets. Due to the growth in global production of pigs and poultry, demand for soybeans is increasing rapidly, outpacing production. Therefore, other sources of plant protein are sometimes used in diets to supply indispensable AA to the animals.

The most abundant oilseeds produced in the world, aside from soybeans, are cottonseed, canola seed (rapeseed), and sunflower seed. These oilseeds may be fed as de-oiled meals, or the full fat seeds can be fed to increase the energy concentration of the diet.

There are no recent data on energy digestibility in canola, cotton, and sunflower products. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to measure the digestible energy (DE) and metabolizable energy (ME) in canola seeds (CS), canola meal (CM), cottonseed meal (CSM), sunflower seeds (SFS), sunflower meal (SFM), and dehulled sunflower meal (SFM-DH), and to compare these values to the DE and ME in soybean meal (SBM).