Evaluation of an expeller-extruded soybean meal for broilers

Any variation in processing soybeans for inclusion in poultry diets requires validation of the ability of the soybean meal to sustain growth performance similar to what is achieved with solvent-extracted soybean meal. Three experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of feeding an expeller-extruded soybean meal vs. a commercial solvent-extracted soybean meal. Growth performance attributable to the source of soybean meal did not differ for 0- to 18-d-old broilers fed 2 levels of Lys (1.0 or 1.3%) and 2 levels of ME (3,000 or 3,300 kcal/kg). Similar growth performance was obtained for broilers fed solvent-extracted soybean meal vs. expeller-extruded soybean meal for 0 to 49 d. However, broilers fed the expeller-extruded soybean meal had lower breast meat yield (24.95 vs. 26.30%). True digestibility values determined with adult cecectomized roosters for the expeller-extruded soybean meal indicated digestibility values of 86.6, 83.5, 87.4, 85.5, 86.5, and 86.7 for Lys, Thr, Met, Val, Ile, and Leu, respectively, which are lower than those reported by the NRC for solvent-extracted soybean meal. The feeding value of expeller-extruded soybean meal used in these experiments was similar to that of solvent-extracted soybean meal; however, consideration must be given to amino acid digestibility to achieve optimal breast meat yield.