Farm full-grown pigs usually respond to weaning stress and initial feeding with less difficulty than do purchase “feeder pigs.” In either case, the digestive area must adjust to dry feed intake. A 16% protein ratio is normally recommended for the 20.5 to 23kg pig until it reaches about 60kg.
Bert Dejong, an animal nutritionist, stresses that soybean meal and other soy products contribute high-quality protein to diets fed to pigs because soy protein is rich in the limiting amino acids lysine, threonine, and tryptophan that are present in relatively low concentrations in the most commonly fed cereal grains.
No matter how expensive feed ingredients become, soybeans remain one of the most economical sources of protein in pig diets.
Soybean is cultivated for its high oil content, because its protein is of good quality, and because it complements the protein of cereals so well that this blend has become the ideal feed for most pig diets worldwide.
Soybean contain anti-nutritional factors which have the most impact on young pigs, especially those around the time of weaning.
Although the introduction of soybean protein post-weaning is recommended to be a gradual process, this method requires the presence of about 10% soybean meal in the first diet post-weaning, increasing rapidly to 15% in the second diet and so on. This approach requires a high level of feed intake to ensure minimal impact as the negative effects of soybean protein tend to be more severe when feed intake is below maintenance requirements.
