The objective of this study was to describe barn management practices and to evaluating cow locomotion, hygiene and hock lesion prevalence of dairy cows housed in Compost Barns (CB) located in the subtropical region of Brazil. The CB has demonstrated satisfactory results in relation to animal comfort and productivity. However, modifications to the initial American recommendations are being made by producers in order to adapt it to different conditions. Thirty dairy farms were analyzed regarding structural measurements and layout, management practices, bedded pack and herd characteristics. The main results highlighted were the resting space of 14.6 m2 cow-1, most of the farms (87%) had newly built facilities and only 43.3% were built in E-W direction. Most farms did not have ridge opening and 60 % had fans in the bedded pack area, which is mostly stirred twice a day. About a third of the farms used CB only during the hottest hours of the day or rainy periods, with pasture access the remainder of the time. The bedded pack material averaged 48.4% DM, pH of 8.68, C:N of 5.90 and deep bedding temperature of 42.52 ⁰C. Locomotion scoring showed majority of the cows with a normal gait (95.5% of cows scoring 1 or 2 for locomotion). Hock lesions were observed in 15.5% of the animals and 84.0% of the cows were clean or only slightly dirty. This study indicates characteristics or issues to start an improvement process on CB usage in Brazilian subtropical region. The cow comfort was considered adequate, based on results of cow locomotion, lesions and hygiene scoring.
Laser beak trimming is a promising alternative to conventional hot-blade beak trimming as it is less painful and provides better beak uniformity and better animal welfare. In this study, laser vs. hot-blade beak trimming were compared in 400 Hy-line Brown pullets between 2-16 weeks of age. At 7 days of age, birds were distributed according to a completely randomized design into two treatments, with 10 replicates (pens) of 20 birds each. Birds and feed offer and residues were weekly weighed to determine weight gain, feed intake, and feed conversion ratio. In weeks 4, 8, 12, and 16 weeks, one bird per experimental unit was sacrificed to measure the development of the heart development, liver, proventriculus, gizzard, small intestine, and bursa. And of the oviduct in week 16. Pullers submitted to laser beak trimming presented higher weight gain and weekly feed intake, and better feed conversion ratio during the evaluated period. There was no influence of beak trimming methods on the development of the digestive organs, bursa or oviduct. Laser beak trimming can be used as an alternative to hot-blade beak trimming of commercial brown layers.
The objective of this study was to evaluate the main scientific studies addressing the topic of compost barns in recent years, highlighting the main journals, authors, countries, organizations, and keywords associated with the publications and trends in this type of research through a bibliometric analysis. For this analysis, publications (articles and literature reviews) addressing compost barns were obtained from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. A total of 108 studies published between 2007 and April 2022 were included. A greater number of publications was observed starting in 2017, with 2021 having the largest number of publications. The Journal of Dairy Science was the most highly cited journal. Marcia I. Endres was the author with the greatest academic impact. The most influential country was the United States, followed by Brazil. Among the organizations that have published studies on compost barns, the Federal University of Lavras, and the University of Florence had the largest numbers of publications. In conclusion, this bibliometric analysis allowed us to evaluate the scientific evolution, research, and publishing tendencies of studies on the compost barn animal housing system, and the results make it possible to deduce current trends in scientific research and publications.
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