A New Housing System for Grower-Finisher Pigs to Separate Feces from Urine and to Reduce Odor and Ammonia Emissions

Abstract

A new housing concept including a belt conveyor (BC) system to separate feces from the urine at the pen level has been successfully developed at IRDA and the main objectives of this part of the project were to measure the separation efficiency of the new pen configuration including the BC system and to evaluate its effect on pig behavior. The pen concept integrates an inclined BC covering the pen dunging area to separate feces from the urine. Pigs walk on the BC, the urine drains out in the middle portion of the pen and the BC activation removes feces from the pen and collects them into a container. Two rooms have been built at IRDA to conduct the experiment. The control room simulates a partially slatted floor pen with a conventional shallow pit configuration and the second room has a custom built BC activated during 3 min every 30 min. Four trials of four weeks each have been completed, providing four replicates for each treatment. In both rooms, pigs performed really well both in terms of growth and feed efficiency and there was no indication of any detrimental effect of the BC system on animal performance or comfort. The BC system has been very effective at isolating most of the phosphorus in a low mass solid phase as 76 to 81% of the phosphorus excreted by the pigs in the BC room has been isolated within the solid phase of excreta representing 20% of the total manure mass. In its current configuration, wash water used to clean the belt would increase water storage requirements by 34% and further investigations are necessary to decrease the amount of water required for cleaning.