Ventilation System Requirements for Conversion to Group Sow Housing
The animal environment and energy costs all are impacted by ventilation. When converting to a group-housed sow barn, retaining the existing ventilation system leads to over-ventilation in winter as they are designed for a higher animal density. This can chill the animals with negative impacts...
Reducing Energy Use in Group Sow Housing Systems
Sows in groups may have a lower critical temperature that is lower than sows housed in individual stalls as they can use thermoregulatory behaviour. If productivity does not changes, reducing energy costs for ventilation and heating may be an option. Adding fibre to the diet...
Treating Swine and Municipal Wastewater with Microbial Fuel Cell Technology
Land application of livestock wastewater is creating challenges for producers due to costs and environmental impacts. Finding alternatives is of great interest in order to have safe disposal with reduced costs. Wastewater contains nitrogenous and organic compounds that can be a source of energy and...
Development of an Air Filtration System for Swine Transport Vehicles to Protect Against Airborne Diseases During Transport
Transporting breeding stock across Canada is a daily occurrence with farms each having biosecurity procedures to reduce potential disease outbreaks. Infecting breeding stock during transport is a risk, especially through pig dense areas. Measures are needed to protect breeding stock during transport to avoid infection...
Benchmarking and Standardization of Swine Production Systems
Wide variations in building design, barn equipment, construction, management and other operational systems contribute to added costs and inefficiencies in hog barns. These variabilities make it difficult to develop improvement measures and they cannot be applied from barn to barn as they are all so...
Impact of Repeated Applications of Liquid Swine Manure and Biogas Production By-Products on Soils and Crops
Different methods of swine manure use are of interest Crop response to swine manure biodigestate produced by biogas production compared to the conventional liquid swine manure and urea fertilizer was looked at. Applying long and short-term fresh and processed liquid swine manure to Saskatchewan soils...
Evaluation of Heat Exchanger, Ground Source Heat Pump, and Conventional Heating Systems
A production cost that can be further reduced is energy cost. This can be done by reducing overall energy consumption or using energy more efficiently. Space heating is an area of interest for energy reduction. The performance of a heat recovery ventilator, a conventional heating...
Using Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles to Control Emissions – Pig Performance, Manure Properties, and Production Cost
Filtration and mixing methods using zinc oxide nanoparticles were effective in controlling odour, ammonia and hydrogen sulphide emissions from swine facilities. This is important to the health and safety of the workers and the environment as well. The feasibility of these methods in commercial swine...
Evaluation of Water Use and Potential Conservation Strategies in Swine Barns
The rate of water use in swine production impacts the overall production cost and the environment. It is usually used for cleaning, animal drinking, cooling and domestic use. The quantity of water use in the different production stages and units has not been discovered. The...
Evaluation of Methods for Controlling and Monitoring Occupational Exposure of Workers in Swine Facilities
Different management and engineering measures can control the levels of air contaminants like dust and ammonia in swine facilities. This helps lower the safety risk of workers in the barn. Control measures were assessed on their effectiveness on decreasing respirable dust and ammonia levels. Low...