Achieving consistent laying hen performance across flocks and production cycles remains one of the biggest challenges for poultry nutritionists. 

Soybean meal sourced from different global origins can exhibit meaningful nutritional differences, particularly in metabolizable energy and digestible amino acid concentrations. What appears to be the same ingredient on paper – soybean meal with similar crude protein percentages – can produce different performance outcomes due to variation in amino acid digestibility, processing conditions and overall nutritional consistency.

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid research reported that soybean meal derived from U.S. Soy contains greater apparent metabolizable energy, 2,334 kilocalories of apparent metabolizable energy per kilogram (kcal/kg) than soybean meals from Brazil, 2,282 kcal/kg, or Argentina, 2,277 kcal/kg. In the same study, soybean meal derived from U.S. Soy also demonstrated higher digestibility of crude protein and essential amino acids, including lysine. Together, these differences indicate that soybean meals with similar crude protein levels can deliver substantially different amounts of usable energy and digestible amino acids depending on origin.

In one study, average egg weights reached 64.7 grams for hens fed soybean meal derived from U.S. Soy, compared to 63.5 grams and 62.3 grams respectively for hens fed Brazilian and Indian soybean meal. This represents a 2.4-gram advantage in egg weight for hens fed soybean meal derived from U.S. Soy.

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