Lay Summary High quality plant-based protein such as soybean meal (SBM) is commonly used to formulate nursery diets to overcome the negative impact of weaning stress in pigs. However, high inclusion level of SBM can impair piglet growth and cause diarrhea due to the undigested protein in the hind gut. Further processing of SBM has been developed to mitigate its negative impact using different techniques, such as fermentation, enzyme treatment, or hydrothermal-mechanical (HTM) processing. An HTM processed SBM (HTM SBM) and an enzyme-treated SBM (Enz Trt SBM) were evaluated in this study to determine the effect of processed SBM on growth performance, crude protein (CP) digestibility and gut microbiome of weaned pigs housed in conventional conditions and under Escherichia coli challenge. The results showed that inclusion of HTM SBM or Enz Trt SBM in the diet showed positive benefits in growth of the pigs, increased CP utilization and promoted a gut microbiome with several microbial members being positively correlated with improved performance outcomes.
Hu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.