Evaluation of Temperature-Humidity Index in a Growing-Finishing Pig Bedding System
This paper studies the heat stress conditions imposed onto growing-finishing pigs housed in a naturally ventilated bedding system with rice husk during the four seasons from March 2013 to February 2014.The barn is located at the suburbs of Nanjing, a city at central of Jiangsu, east of China.In the region, the main losses in pig production result from the summer period,characterized by high air temperature and relative humidity.Dry-bulb temperature and relative humidity data were obtained in the interior of building, as well as the external conditions.The hourly temperature-humidity index (THI) was calculated for evaluation of thermal comfort.The analysis shows that indoor average daily temperature across all units ranged from 2.3℃ to34.4℃, and average relative humidity from 49.2% to 92.9%.The difference between indoor and outdoor temperature during the four seasons ranged between 0.0℃ and 9.0℃, while its mean value equaled to 3.1℃.No significant differences were detected between indoor and outdoor relative humidity levels (P > 0.05).The hourly THI values indoor ranged from 34.7 to 99.5,frequently higher than the desirable range in summer.Animals were exposed to heat stress in10.5%, 31.5% and 4.6% of spring, summer and autumn hours, respectively, whereas no heat stress was identified during winter.Pig are more prone to severe heat stress during summer, as the daily maximum hourly values of THI remained higher than the severe heat stress threshold(THI=79) in 66.3% of the summer days.
Pig barn heat stress climate temperature relative humidity welfare
Zhongkai Zhou Zhu Qin Hui Li Hongru Gu Gang Yu Jie Yang
Institute of Facilities and Equipment in Agriculture, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Science,Nanjin Institute of Animal Science, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Science, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210014, China
国际会议
The 2015 International Symposium on Animal Environment and Welfare(动物环境和福利国际研讨会)
重庆
英文
34-41
2015-10-23（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）