High Soybean Meal Diets Resolve Summer Carcass Weight Decline
The decline of carcass weight during summer can be minimized with the strategic use of high levels of soybean meal in grow-finish diets.
Based on the research, the team designed summer diet programs with the intent to maximize feed intake, tracking the outcomes of three different programs:
- A high-energy program that uses fats and DDGs (higher cost)
- A summer soybean meal program. This lower-energy diet, for pigs sold during summer months, has a minimal soybean meal level to optimize growth performance and does not include DDGs (lower cost).
- A lower-energy diet that did not increase levels of soybean meal, but instead replaced soybean meal with DDGs (lower cost)
Compared to the high-energy diet, models show that the maximum feed intake program (the summer soybean meal program) reduced feed costs by $4 per pig, adding up to 6 lbs live weight and up to 4.6 lbs carcass weight.
The lower-energy diet demonstrated an expected difference—a higher percentage of lightweight pigs—meaning, the summer soybean program yielded a premium of 3% over the lower-energy diet. Based on these results, margin over feed costs (MOFC) for the soybean meal program offers an advantage of $9.20 over a high-energy diet, while the lower-energy diet offers a $4.20 advantage.
“If you are tempted to go to a lower-energy diet program, the weights will be lighter [and] you will also be increasing the percentage of lightweight pigs, which—depending on the plant you're selling your pigs to—might represent a bigger discount.”
- David Rosero, PhD, Assistant Professor, Iowa State University
Watch Now: Featured Key Takeaways
A Summer Diet to Maximize Feed Intake
David Rosero discusses the opportunity associated with a SBM summer diet.
Soybean Meal for Summer Hog Growth
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