February 24, 2016 – Modesto, CA
Modesto Milling is the only organic feed producer in the Western United States that produces its own soybean meal.
Producing and extruding our own soybean products means we have more choices when it comes to buying beans instead of being limited to sourcing meal and oil from a very limited number of providers.
Why are soybean meal and oil important? They are a great source of protein, energy and amino acids. These are all important traits for feed ingredients when growth is an objective. These products can also help with egg production in poultry and digestion in cattle and other hoofed mammals with multiple stomachs (ruminants).
We use organic soybeans a few different ways at Modesto Milling.
Our largest volume of production at our Planada Mill is soybean meal cake. The protein percentage is higher because the soybean oil is removed. It averages 47% protein and makes up 20-25% of our soy-based poultry feed formulations. Soybean meal is also heavily used in our soy-based feed formulas for most other species.
The soybean oil itself is a powerful source of energy – about 2 1/4 times higher than any other grain. This dense energy source is useful for raising meat birds or many other high-energy feed applications.
Another popular application of the organic soybeans is our full-fat soybean meal. Unlike the soybean meal cake, the full-fat soybean meal skips the press, leaving the oil intact with the fat. This increases palatability and maintains the by-pass protein longer in the digestive process for ruminants instead of being used up in the animal’s first stomach.
The pressing and extrusion process is one that is hard to explain, but interesting to watch. So, we have posted some links to videos of the process on our new web page at www.modestomilling.com/planada.html.
If you have questions about our process or soy-based formulas, reach out to cwagner@modestomilling.com.