Dr. Thomas D’Alfonso, PhD, Worldwide Animal Nutrition Focus Area Director at the U.S. Soybean Export Council, was interviewed by The Poultry Site’s Sarah Mikesell about how consistency in soybean meal quality connects directly to egg weight, shell strength, flock health and the revenue side of a layer operation – not just the cost side.

When it comes to making profit in the egg industry, cost is important, but revenue should be higher than cost or you’re not making money. To make revenue in the egg industry, you don’t just need a good number of eggs – you need a good size distribution. Soybean meal plays an enormous role in the ability to produce those eggs. It provides the essential amino acids and metabolizable energy, and it creates a difference in profitability due to high quality ingredients versus low quality ingredients, which has a big impact on the bottom line.

When an animal experiences a nutrient deficiency, that laying hen will eat more feed to make up for that. If the animal experiences higher metabolizable energy than is needed, it’ll just convert into fat, so the net result is that having variability of metabolizable energy means that feed consumption goes up without egg production or egg weight going up. It’s best to look at the cost per unit of animal protein produced because it determines the bottom line profitability of modern poultry operations, whether it’s broilers, layers or any other species.

Research in the last 10 years has shown that soybean meal derived from U.S. Soy has high digestibility due to essential amino acids that contribute to metabolizable energy. When we think of metabolizable energy, we often consider carbohydrates and fat, but it also comes from having highly digestible amino acids. We’re seeing high quality soybean meal derived from U.S. Soy having nearly as much metabolizable energy as corn.

Read the full interview here or watch the video below.