Efficiency of the misting system on the thermal comfort of pigs

Abstract

The farming pig is one of the activities in the livestock sector that makes Brazilian agribusiness contribute approximately 25% of the national PIB, also leading the sector to be recognized worldwide as a major exporter of products and inputs. The consumption of pork meat is expanding rapidly and, in this sense, keeping animals in a thermal comfort zone helps to reduce heat stress in these animals, making the final quality of the meat as high as possible. In this sense, it evaluated the efficiency of the nebulization system in reducing the internal temperature in a pig shed in the growth phase, verifying the maintenance of the thermoneutrality parameter. Three sensors were installed to measure the ambient temperature at three different heights inside the shed, with measurements taken at three different times of the day and with the automatic nebulization system for 45 days. The temperature measured at 12h showed the highest value in the three evaluation times, thus increasing the animal's body temperature. When activated, the nebulization system reduced the ambient temperature by 20.5% and consequently reduced the animal's body temperature. The activation of the nebulization system brought great benefits in terms of temperature reduction inside the shed, being in conjunction with the ventilation system, however, still not presenting ideal temperature values ​​for thermal comfort of the animals.