In recent years, increasing attention has been given to the use of increased soybean meal levels in swine diets. Part of this interest has been driven by changes in the soybean industry, especially the expansion of biodiesel production across the United States, which has increased soybean processing capacity, and may improve the future availability and price competitiveness of SBM. As a result, swine producers and nutritionists want to better understand the feeding value of SBM at higher dietary levels.

Typically, a major concern with feeding high dietary SBM would be the presence of non-starch polysaccharides, commonly referred to as ‘fibers’, which could potentially impair growth since they have previously been described as antinutritional factors (Choct et al. 2010). 

While most SBM polysaccharides would likely escape gastric and small intestinal digestion due to the absence of host enzymes that can degrade them, they could be fermented by the gut microbiota of the large intestine. By utilizing the non-digestible fraction of SBM-based diets, gut microbial communities would then contribute to improved gut health and nutrient utilization, thereby benefiting overall pig performance.

As a result of this trial, we observed that pigs fed the High SBM diet had increased body weight (P < 0.05) on day 56, and that this difference was maintained throughout the remainder of the study. These results support the hypothesis that higher performance of pigs on a high SBM diet may have been the result of hindgut microbiome activity, providing additional nutrients due to microorganisms working together to break down fiber. These results may also help shed light on the recent observations of increased NE values for SBM, which suggest that feeding higher SBM levels may be beneficial rather than detrimental to pig production.

Read more about the study here.