Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2013
Journal or Book Title
Transactions of the ASABE
Volume
56
Issue
3
First Page
1145
Last Page
1156
DOI
10.13031/trans.56.10097
Abstract
Maintaining comfortable thermal environments and good indoor air quality is essential to ensuring optimal production performance, welfare, and health of animals. Alternative laying-hen housing systems are being adopted by some egg producers in the U.S. However, information on indoor thermal and aerial environments of such alternative housing systems is meager. This article reports a one-year monitoring of thermal conditions (air temperature and relative humidity or RH) and ammonia (NH3) concentrations and emissions of four aviary laying-hen houses (same dimensions, manure belt plus litter floor systems, 50,000-hen capacity each) at a commercial farm in the Midwest U.S. Carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations at the air inlet and near the exhaust fans were measured and used, along with literature values of the metabolic rates of the hens, to estimate building ventilation rate (VR). The results show that indoor temperature, RH, CO2 concentration, NH3 concentration, and VR of the four houses (mean ±standard deviation) were 23.4°C ±0.3°C, 64% ±3%, 1520 ±87 ppm, 5.2 ±0.4 ppm, and 4.5 ±0.6 m3 h-1 hen-1, respectively. The highest daily mean NH3 concentration was 13 ppm (and 20 ppm within the day) in winter. The NH3 emission rate was 0.14 ±0.01 g d-1 hen-1. These values of NH3 concentrations and emissions were lower than those reported for European aviary houses. The NH3 emissions of the monitored aviary houses in this study are comparable to those of U.S. manure-belt cage houses, but are much lower than those of U.S. high-rise cage houses. The magnitude of NH3 emissions observed in this study was consistent with that of similar aviary houses with brown hens in another extended field measurement in the same region.
Access
Open
Copyright Owner
American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers
Copyright Date
2013
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Zhao, Yang; Xin, Hongwei; Shepherd, Timothy A.; Hayes, Morgan D.; Stinn, John P.; and Li, Hong, "Thermal Environment, Ammonia Concentrations, and Ammonia Emissions of Aviary Houses with White Laying Hens" (2013). Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Publications. 379.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/abe_eng_pubs/379
Comments
This article is from Transactions of the ASABE 56, no. 3 (2013): 1145–1156, doi:10.13031/trans.56.10097.