The influence of soybean concentrate and fish meal on nursery pig performance

The objective of our study was to evaluate the effect of increasing levels of dietary soybean meal concentrate (SBMC), produced through dehydrating and enzymatic treatment, and fish meal on the performance of weanling pigs. A total of 360 nursery pigs (barrows) were used in a 24-d study to evaluate the effects on growth performance of nursery diets containing SBMC or fish meal. Pigs were weaned at approximately 21 d of age and placed on a pre-test diet for 7 d before dietary treatments began. Pens of pigs were balanced by initial weight and randomly allotted to 1 of 7 dietary treatments with 9 replications per treatment. The 7 dietary treatments included a control diet containing no specialty protein sources or the control diet with 2, 4 or 6% select menhaden fish meal; or the control diet with 2, 4, or 6% SBMC. All experimental diets were fed for 14 d, followed by a common diet for 10 d.

Neither fish meal nor SBMC influenced any growth performance criteria (P > 0.13) from d 0 to 14. During the common period (d 14 to 24), pigs previously fed fish meal tended to have better F/G than pigs previously fed SBMC (P = 0.09). Overall (d 0 to 24), there were no differences in growth performance between treatments (P > 0.34).

In conclusion, SBMC and fish meal had similar effects on growth performance, but neither provided a benefit compared to the pigs fed the control diet.