Construction Material Interference on Air Temperature and Humidity Inside the Piglet Creep Area

Abstract

Piglet development in the farrowing house is a determining factor for the economic success of the farm, being essential to use means to ensure the survival and the satisfactory performance of the piglets in this phase. The objective was to evaluate the thermal comfort of two different creeps for piglets. For this, it was used a farrowing house with four individual pens, two made of wood, and two of polyethylene. Inside each creep and at the geometric center of each room, a data logger was installed to record temperature and humidity. Data were collected in four batches every 30 minutes for three weeks. These variables were analyzed using a repeated measures model. The polyethylene creep was the most suitable with 27.36% and 27.19% of the data within the comfort range, while the wooden creep achieved 13.61% and 23.85%, in the weeks 1 and 2, respectively. Only on the third week the wood creep presented better results, with 42.45%, whereas that of polyethylene attained 16.52% of the data within the comfort range. The creeps building materials had influence on the inner air temperature and humidity, and may affect the animals performance. Generally, the polyethylene creep provides better comfort conditions for piglets.

Surface Temperature of Piglets in Creep Feeders Submitted to Different Heating Systems

“…Most of the researches with different heating systems for pigs (McGINNIS et al, 1981;SILVA et al, 2005, SABINO et al, 2015 have shown significant results in the use of heated floors due to the heat transfer by conduction from the floor to the animals, being a more thermally efficient method.…”