Mass Balance Applied to Brazilian Conventional Broiler Houses during One Production Cycle

A Migliavacca,Ji Yanagihara

doi:10.1590/1806-9061-2016-0365

A Migliavacca, Ji Yanagihara

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-9061-2016-0365

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Abstract

ABSTRACT Brazil plays an important role in global poultry production as it is the world’s largest chicken exporter and the third largest broiler producer. Despite the development achieved by the Brazilian broiler industry as a result of the integrated production system, many obstacles still need to be overcome, in particular, housing environment. In this regard, detailed knowledge of the inputs, outputs, and primary waste generated by broiler production cycles is essential to establish a baseline for energy balance research studies and to develop environmental solutions. This article proposes a mass balance of conventional broiler houses of southern Brazil sheds in order to predict their outputs, but that may also be applicable to other regions with similar climate. Control volumes considered the heating, cooling, and rearing processes. All generated products and wastes were estimated considering litter production and the total production per cycle. Despite the variety of the microclimates, the results were very close to those reported in experiments, indicating that this model is adequate for this kind of estimation.

Highlights

Brazil is the third largest producer and the main exporter of broiler meat in the world, and its poultry industry is one of most efficient sectors of the Brazilian agribusiness
The method developed to predict the output parameters of the broiler production process allowed finding the masses of the products and of the waste
The method took into consideration a standard scenario of a conventional broiler house with 1200-m2 production area, 4-m height, and capacity to house a flock of 13,000 straight-run Cobb-500 broilers

Summary

Introduction

Brazil is the third largest producer and the main exporter of broiler meat in the world, and its poultry industry is one of most efficient sectors of the Brazilian agribusiness. The southern region of Brazil accounts for 63.46% of Brazilian broiler production, and for a significant share of chicken meat exports (ABPA, 2015). One third of the animal protein currently consumed in the world derives from chicken meat Broilers have one of the lowest production costs, and are the fastest converters of feed into animal protein (Miele & Girotto, 2004). In the 1980s, a broiler needed 70 days to reach around 2 kg body weight at a feed conversion ratio (FCR) of 3.5. In the 2000s, broilers reached 2.3 kg body weight at a feed conversion ratio of 1.8 in 42 days (Bueno & Rossi, 2006). Despite of the improvement in genetics and technology, the main obstacle for higher productivity is the broiler house environment

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