Two High Oleic Soybeans experiments were conducted to compare soybean meal (SBM) from high oleic to parent soybean cultivars on growth performance, ileal AA (IAA) digestibility, and apparent metabolizable energy (AME). Soybean meal was prepared by laboratory-scale mechanical extraction. In the first experiment the growth performance was evaluated using 50 day-old male broilers (Ross 308). The birds were randomly allocated to two dietary treatments with five replicates and five birds per replicate. The SBM sources consisted of cold-pressed conventional SBM and cold-pressed high oleic SBM (HOSBM). All SBM sources were heated in a forced-air oven at 120°C for 20 min.

In the first experiment, IAA digestibility and AME were estimated using 100 day-old broilers randomly allotted to three dietary treatments with ten replicates and five birds per replicate. Chicks were fed a corn-SBM based diet for 17 days and a diet was developed by substituting the soybean cultivars at 48% in a corn starch-dextrose basal diet and fed from days 18 to 21. A nitrogen-free diet was fed to determine ileal endogenous AA losses. Titanium dioxide (0.5%) was included in all diets as a digesta flow marker. Excreta were collected from days 19 to 21 and ileal content at day 21.

Results indicated that the chicks fed diets containing HOSBM had decreased ADG (P < 0.05; 25.3 vs. 29.4 g) and increased feed conversion ratio (P < 0.05; 1.54 vs. 1.47) from day 0 to 21, compared to the control SBM. Amino acid digestibility did not differ among all essential AA. There were no differences in AME (kcal per g) from SBM indirectly calculated between the two SBM sources. The researchers concluded that although there were no differences in nutrient digestibility, broilers fed soybean meal processed from high oleic soybeans had poorer performance compared to soybean meal processed from conventional soybeans.