Consistent, Quality Ingredients Are Key
In commercial animal production, the primary goal is to enhance feed efficiency due to the significant and continuous feeding expenses. That’s why providing the necessary nutrients to meet the animals’ needs is vital without surpassing them. This strategy involves understanding the specific processing methods of ingredients to boost their nutritional value for animal feed. For instance, soy meals are a key component in comprehensive diets, and assessing the feeding value of each soy meal based on digestible amino acids can present an opportunity for cost savings through precise diet formulation.
We have highlighted that not all extruders/mechanical pressing systems or other soybean processing methods, such as toasting after solvent extraction, dry extrusion, wet extrusion, roasting, and autoclaving, are the same because not all processes add equal nutritional value to soy meal. As a result, formulating animal diets using the correct values generated through digestibility studies is a precision-based strategy to maximize nutrient utilization, minimize nutrient excretion, and improve animal performance.
Indeed, ingredient quality depends upon the proper processing parameters, including the final barrel temperature (i.e., processing temperature) which is a determinant of nutritional quality. Accordingly, when referring to high-shear dry extruded full-fat soy (EFFS) or extruded & mechanical pressed soy meal (ExPress®), make sure that you know the processing technology and if it was processed following the standardized parameters that guarantee the unique nutritional value of those soy meal sources. That point is crucial when making comparisons between mechanically processed soy meals or when comparing mechanical processes vs. other methods.
Usually, specific differences in nutritional quality according to the method utilized to process soybeans are noticeable. For example, when comparing roasting, to create roasted full-fat soy (RFFS), vs. high-shear dry extrusion, birds fed EFFS had higher energy utilization than those fed RFFS. Furthermore, birds fed high-shear dry extruded full-fat soy had greater digestibility of lysine (87.1 vs. 78.1%) and methionine (93.5 vs. 90.3%) with respect to RFFS.
Overall, the nutritional profile of ingredients has been tested and proven to produce a specific profile and performance in animals providing nutritionists, feed millers, etc. the precise values they need when formulating diets. The other key is knowing how the ingredients are processed. Utilizing extrusion technology proven to provide a consistent high-quality ingredient with increased digestible nutrients is the key to maximizing animal performance.
