What Makes Soybean Meal a Preferred Feed Source for Animals?

Understanding the usefulness of domestic animals is the key to having a nourishing and peaceful life. There is a unique relationship that human beings and domestic animals have had since time immemorial. Both animals and human beings depend mutually on each other for survival. Humans care for animals and get food products, protection, labor, and companionship.

Perhaps the biggest benefit animals provide for humans is food. Animal products account for around 40% and 20% of total agricultural output in developed and developing nations supporting the livelihoods of more than 1.3 billion people globally.

As domestic animals contribute significantly to people’s livelihood, their feeds have become critical concerns that must be addressed immediately. While there are many feeds that you can give your animals, soybeans are the most nutritious meal that all animals should be fed.

This article will unpack what makes soybeans the most preferred animal feed source.

1. High Protein

Soybean has between 44% to 49% protein content. It is considered a great source of protein meal, especially for lactating animals, among other farm animals. Furthermore, it contains a high concentration of lysine that increases the meal’s protein content through protein synthesis.

Protein plays a significant role in animal growth. For instance, animals require protein to increase milk production, continuous growth, and reproduction. Moreover, farm animals like poultry and pigs do not digest well-fiber diets and prefer high-protein meals like soybean with low fiber content.

Soybean diets offer large amounts of protein, which is excellent for monogastric animals. The high protein content in soybean makes it the perfect supplement for any animal feed.

2. High Carbohydrates Concentration

Soybean is an excellent source of animal feed with high quantities of starch, sugars, and fiber. It contains approximately 31.8% carbohydrates.

As the primary energy source in animal meals, carbohydrates can add up to 75% of the diet. They are essential in providing excess energy through starch during deficiency periods.

In addition, they provide energy used in muscular movements and act as a heating source to maintain the body’s temperature.

Lastly, carbohydrates provide building blocks such as disaccharides and monosaccharides for other diets to form and successfully store excess energy in fats. The stored fats can then be used by the body in the future when the body is deficient.

Carbohydrates in soybean include starch, sugars, and non-starch polysaccharides that have high energy and are easily digestible in the body. The high content level of carbohydrates makes soybean an excellent supplement for animal feeds.

3. Presence of Amino Acids

Amino acid remains a significant nutrient that should be included in animals’ diets. Like proteins, they are building blocks of the animal life cycle.

They are crucial in enhancing animals’ metabolic rate and nutrition. Besides playing an important role, amino acids continue contributing to the health maintenance, reproduction, and lactation of different farm animals, ruminants, and poultry.

Even as animal nutritionists lean towards increasing the use of amino acids to cater to the growing demand for animal products, soybean would be the best animal feed alternative due to the many essential and non-essential amino acids.

Examples of essential amino acids in soybean meal are arginine and methionine, while cysteine and glutamic acid are non-essential. As a cost-effective animal feed, soybean can help you provide good chunks of amino acids to the livestock.

4. Palatability

It is necessary to select the most palatable diet from a wide variety of animal feeds to meet the nutrition requirements of your livestock.

At the same time, you must avoid meals that may harm the animal. The sour taste may imply that the feeds are spoiled, while sweet and salty flavors indicate the presence of nutrients that help the animal’s overall well-being.

The soybean diet is highly palatable and can increase feed intake hence raising the productivity of the animal. Soybean has a balanced nutrition content. It provides the animals with a balanced diet containing adequate protein, carbohydrates, fats, and acids easily digestible in bodies.

Compared to other animal feeds, soybean meal has a high metabolic rate as well. Therefore, it has become highly preferred and consumed in many parts of the world.

Conclusion

Animals continue to make crucial contributions to the global food supply. As such, animal feeds have become an increasingly vital component of the integrated food supply chain.

Currently, livestock products account for almost 30% of global agriculture and 19% of food production. Meeting the world demand for milk, meat, eggs, and other livestock products depends significantly on the availability of regular supplies of appropriate and cost-effective animal feeds.

Soybean meal, a by-product of soybean oil extraction, is the most vital nutrient used to feed animals on the farm. It accounts for two-thirds of the world’s total protein foodstuff output, including fish and other oil meals. Regarding feeding value, it is not matched by any other plant protein source and is the benchmark to which other protein sources are compared.

If you want a perfect animal feed, consider getting soybean for your livestock. Soybean meal is highly digestible due to the presence of amino acids; therefore, its metabolic rate is very high. Also, the carbohydrate content in soybean meals will give your animals energy for movement, growth, and maintenance.