Soybean in pre-ruminant nutrition: A review

Abstract

Soybean,Glycine max, is a highly nutritious seed. It contains high quality protein and unsaturated fat. Despite the high nutritive value of soybeans, its use has been limited by a number of anti- nutritional _.factors which are capable of causing adverse nutritional and physiological responses in animals. Several processing methods such as heat treatment, use of chemicals such as acids, alkali and alcohols or a combination of these have been developed and used to reduce or completely eliminate these anti-nutritional factors and hence improve its utilization. This review addresses the nutritive value of soybean, anti-nutritional factors, effect of processing on the nutritive value of the seed and the utilization of soybean in milk replacers for pre-ruminants. Well processed soybean can provide high quality proteins that can be used to replace milk proteins in milk replacers for pre ruminants. Studies on utilization of milk replacers by pre-ruminants are scanty in Nigeria. More effort needs to be devoted to research in this area.