March 16, 2005

Poultry to benefit from improved, more nutritious soybeans

Poultry producers who feed soybean meal to their chickens have always known that much of the meal's potential nutritional value is not passed to the birds, and that the waste can create environmental problems because of high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen.

A University of Illinois study is seeking ways to solve both problems by making some changes in the process of producing soybean meal.

Carl Parsons is the U of I professor of animal sciences and the lead researcher in the research project, Niche Marketing Opportunities in Animal Feeding for Small Farms with Soybeans, funded by the Illinois Council for Food and Agricultural Research (C-FAR) through the Sentinel Program administrated by the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station.

A number of processing changes were examined with one in particular offering great promise.

"Some soybeans are processed mechanically rather than with solvents," said Parsons. "The meal and oil are extracted from the beans by extrusion and pressure. This leaves 5 to 8 percent of the oil in the meal as compared to 2 percent in the other process. This increase is attractive to poultry producers because it increases the energy value of the meal."

A key in the process, Parsons added, is temperature. The temperature at which the soybeans are processed is very critical. The study looked at four different processing temperatures and identified the two that were best for optimal meal production.

"We found that if the processors increased the time for processing the beans and the temperature, the digestibility of the phosphorus in the soybean meal would be improved," he said.

The study also evaluated the by-products that are often processed out of soybean meal during production would provide better nutrition if they were blended back in.

"Our discoveries won't cure all of the problems," he said. "But our study points to some promising directions."