Assessing Temperature Distribution inside Commercial Stacked Cage Broiler Houses in Winter.

Abstract

The temperature inside broiler houses is crucial to broiler health, welfare, and productivity. High stocking density in broiler houses can easily lead to nonuniform temperature conditions, which would cause broilers to suffer cold and heat stress. It is essential to assess the temperature distribution inside broiler houses and investigate the factors that affect temperature uniformity. Therefore, in this study, temperature, wind velocity, and differential pressure were monitored in the aisle, at the sidewall inlet, and outside the sidewalls of a commercial stacked-deck cage broiler house in Northeast China aiming to continuously monitor the temperature throughout the entire fattening period. Results show that the maximum temperature difference increased from 1.85 °C to 6.43 °C, while the daily fluctuation increased from 2.27 °C to 5.80 °C. The highest temperature was consistently recorded at the side of the exhaust fans (p < 0.001) in the longitudinal direction. In the lateral direction, the temperature difference varies periodically with solar radiation. The average temperature at the southern location (23.58 ± 1.97 °C), which faces the sun, was higher than that at the northern location (23.35 ± 1.38 °C), which is in the shade, during periods of solar radiation (p < 0.001) at the last testing period. However, without solar radiation, the northern location recorded a warmer temperature (23.19 ± 1.41 °C) compared to the southern location (22.30 ± 1.67 °C) (p < 0.001). The lateral temperature differences are strongly positively correlated with solar radiation and wind speed (p < 0.001). In conclusion, the inside temperature nonuniformity and fluctuation increased as the broiler age increased, which affected the production performance of broilers. Nonuniform solar radiation and wind speed can lead to differences in the inlet temperature and air volume between both sidewalls, thereby affecting the uniformity of the lateral temperature inside the house.