Energy, Production and Environmental Characteristics of a Conventional Weaned Piglet Farm in North West Spain

Abstract

Postweaning is one of the most sensitive and energy-demanding phases of swine production. The objective of this research was to assess the energy, production and environmental characteristics of a conventional farm with temperature-based environmental control. The selected energy, environmental and production variables were measured on farm, in a high livestock density area of NW Spain, for seven production cycles. The quantification of variables was aimed at obtaining the maximum performance with the lowest possible use of resources, focusing on animal welfare and production efficiency. The Brown–Forsythe, Welch and Games-Howell tests revealed significant differences in terms of temperature, relative humidity and CO2 concentrations among production cycles, and among the critical, postcritical and final periods. Improved humidity management resulted in a 17% reduction of climate control energy, which involved energy savings in the range of 33% to 47% per kg produced at the end of the postweaning cycle. Accordingly, adding humidity as a control variable could result in higher ventilation rates, thereby improving animal welfare, reducing heating energy use and increasing weight gain per unit climate control energy. In addition, the strong correlations found between heating energy and relative humidity (R2 = 0.73) and ventilation energy and CO2 (R2 = 0.99) suggest that these variables could be readily estimated without additional sensor costs.

Development of Thermal Performance Metrics for Direct Gas-Fired Circulating Heaters

“…It should be cautioned against decreasing the ventilation rate of a building to reduce the seasonal heating cost as air quality and moisture levels will be directly impacted and could negatively impact production within the building. The costs and corresponding energy inputs are higher than reported values from field studies for animal agricultural buildings with similar heat production values per floor area [14][15][16]. These differences are most likely attributed to the method used and the local weather data differences from the reported study's locations.…”

Examining the predictors of university students' engagement, fear of missing out and Internet addiction in online environments

“…Since the assumption of homogeneity of variance according to the Levene's test was not met, Welch statistic (Welch (1947)) statistic was used for the data. The Games–Howell contrast could be used for multiple comparisons when the assumption of homogeneity of variances is not satisfied (Fernandez et al. , 2020; Li et al.…”

“…Since the assumption of homogeneity of variance according to the Levene's test was Welch (1947)) statistic was used for the data. The Games-Howell contrast could be used for multiple comparisons when the assumption of homogeneity of variances is not satisfied (Fernandez et al, 2020;Li et al, 2019). SE scores show significant differences according to Internet usage purpose, opinions toward taking courses in an online environment and mostly with whom they contact online (p < 0.05).…”

Analyzing and Modeling Environmental and Production Variables in Weaned Piglet Farms

“…In contrast, an epidemiologic study associated air quality with swine health on 28 swine farms in southern Sweden and established a maximum recommended CO 2 value of 1540 ppm [32]. Seasonal variations were observed in CO 2 concentrations inside the building, [26,33], where the highest values corresponded to cold seasons and the lowest values corresponded to warm seasons (Figure 2), which was directly related to the operation of the ventilation system [34]. Understanding the housing and management factors that affect CO 2 concentrations in pig buildings could improve the effectiveness of ventilation systems and, consequently, the indoor environment in pig buildings [33].…”