Summary: Nutritive value of modified soybean meals for meat-type poultry

Sally Noll, PhD
Professor - Turkey Nutrition
Department of Animal Science
University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN

Soybean meal is used extensively in poultry diets due to its content of amino acids, digestibility of those amino acids, and its amino acid balance. Nutritive value will be dependent bean type, processing, and poultry feeding program. While conventional soybean meal continues to be an excellent source of amino acids in poultry diets, its use can be limited due to the presence of anti-nutritional factors, undigestible carbohydrates, low metabolizable energy content of the meal and mineral content. With feeding practices changing to match other types of production system such as organic, antibiotic free, and so forth also means that soybean meal inclusion needs to be more finely-tuned. The soybean growers and processors; and feed industry have been proactive regarding genetic selection and processing modifications to reduce the impact of some of the undesirable components of soybean meal. Research conducted at the University of Minnesota demonstrated inclusion of soybean meal with a lowered content of oligosaccharides improved turkey body weight, feed efficiency and diet apparent metabolizable energy content with young turkeys. This and other research with modified soybean meals has been able to demonstrate improvements in feeding value in turkey and broiler diets.