Effect of Formaldehyde Treatment of Soybean Meal on the Performance of Growing Steers and Lambs

Abstract

Two feeding trials and two nitrogen digestibility trials were conducted with growing steers and lambs to determine the effects of treating the soybean meal (SBM) of low and high protein diets with two levels of formaldehyde. In all trials, SBM, which made up half the total dietary protein in each diet, was treated with water (control), 1.5 ml (F-1.5) or 3.0 ml (F-3.0) 40% formaldehyde/100 g soybean protein. Holstein steers on treatment F-3.0 gained significantly less (P<.05) than controls indicating the SBM may have been over-treated. However, there were no differences in daily nitrogen retained, fecal nitrogen, or nitrogen apparently absorbed. Lambs were fed three iso-caloric diets containing untreated or treated SBM (F-l .5 and F-3.0) in an incomplete 3 x 3 factorial design. Diets containing 10.0 and 11.1% crude protein resulted in slower gains (P<.05) than feeding the 13.8% protein diet. There were no differences in gains of blood urea nitrogen levels for the formaldehyde treatments. Two 3 x 3 latin-square digestibility trials over all levels of formaldehyde and the 10.0 and 11.1% crude protein diets resulted in no significant differences due to formaldehyde or level of protein for N-intake, fecal-N, or apparent N-digestibility. However, within each protein level, fecal-N tended to be higher than controls when the SBM was treated with formaldehyde and the apparent N-digestibility tended to be lower than controls, indicating that the SBM may have been over-treated even at the lowest level of formaldehyde used. Copyright © 1974. American Society of Animal Science . Copyright 1974 by American Society of Animal Science