Justification of choice of stress-free pig housing method on small-scale farms at designing stage
2019
Kaliuga, V., Saint-Petersburg State Agrarian Univ. (Russian Federation) | Trifanov, A., Federal Scientific Agroengineering Centre VIM, Moscow (Russian Federation) | Bazykin, V., Federal Scientific Agroengineering Centre VIM, Moscow (Russian Federation) | .
It is known that the animal body’s resistance to stress is accompanied by the drop in the growth rate of the live weight of young animals and the increased culling rate of the productive livestock. Therefore, the stress-free methods of pig housing are recommended, which eliminate or limit the effect of stress on piglets. The aim of the study was to substantiate the choice of a stress-free method of pig housing designing a small-scale family farm for 500 pigs per year. With this aim in view, an engineering simulation was performed using the data from relevant regulatory documents for two-, three-, and four- and five-phase pig housing methods. According to the calculation results, the technological space-planning solutions were developed. To choose the most suited ones, two indicators were taken as the criteria: use of the main-purpose area in the isolated sections for lactating sows, suckling piglets, weaned piglets and fattening pigs (m2 •days) and meat production per unit area per fattening cycle (kg•(m2 •days)E−1). In terms of the main-purpose area use per year, the five-phase stress-free method of pig housing was found 34.7 % more efficient than the two-phase method, 7.2 % more efficient than the three-phase method and 13.8 % more efficient than the four-phase method. The second indicator for the five-phase housing method was 7.94 kg•(m2 •days)E−1 that was 38.1 % higher than for the two-phase method, 5.4 % higher than for the three-phase method and 9.1 % higher than for the four-phase method. Comparative assessment of the methods under consideration showed the two-phase method to be much worse in all respects. The four-phase method had comparable indicators with the three- and five-phase methods, but in contrast to them had no time reserve for the use of premises for additional housing of pigs depending on the feeding quality and animal genetic potential. The most rational choice was between the three- and five-phase stress-free pig housing methods, with the latter being the most feasible based on the calculation results.
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