• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.283-300
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• 2004

Currently commercial dry sows are housed in individual stalls and subject to restricted feeding. These sows often show stereotypic behaviours which increase their maintenance energy requirement. Group housing is desirable to improve animal welfare and public perception. However, under restricted feeding systems, group-housed dry sows are also aggressive. The feed intake of these sows is variable, depending on their social rank, which results in different milk production and variable piglet performance. These problems can be solved by ad libitum feeding systems, but the large capacity of intake by dry sows will not allow this feeding system to be practical as high feeding level during pregnancy can reduce reproduction performance of sows. Current research indicates that feeding high fibre diets to dry sows enables sows to be fed ad libitum, but the effect of dietary fibre on feed intake and nutrient utilisation is dependent on the quality of fibre sources. Most research has focused on sugar beet pulp, straw, lucerne meal and by-products, but there is a need to identify and evaluate some widely available and cheap fibre materials and feed grains for developing the best strategy to control nutrient intake of dry sows while feeding ad libitum.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.279-286
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• 2010

Livestock production in Vietnam is, as in most Asian countries, increasing rapidly and changing into specialized highly intensified operations. The volume of animal excreta generated exceeds the capacity of the operation land base and cannot be utilized efficiently. As a consequence, there is a loss of plant nutrients from livestock farms that causes environmental pollution. This study carried out a feed and excretion experiment measuring fecal characteristic, daily fecal production, daily nitrogen and phosphorous excretion from grower-finisher pigs fed prevalent rations in Vietnam. Furthermore, equations for assessing the excretion were tested, which can be used in farm models for optimal recycling of manure while focusing on reducing pollution. The results indicated that fecal production and nutrient excretion were affected by the different rations tested. This study showed that five selected equations for predicting excretion from grower-finisher pigs in Danish conditions can also be used with precision in Vietnamese pig farming systems. The equations have been proven valid and can, therefore, be used as a much needed tool for assessing fecal production and nitrogen in excreta on pig farms. The study also showed that about 12% of nitrogen excreted was emitted during housing. Waste water contains more than half of the nitrogen excreted, mainly in ammonium form which has a high potential for gaseous emission.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.135-144
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• 2002

An experiment was conducted to evaluate a ventilation system, which was devised to encourage farmers to use the enclosed growing and finishing pig housing system. A roof-air-entry ventilation system in winter and a side-wall-air-entry system in summer were evaluated. Air flow rate on the floor level which is the low part of pen and the living area of pigs in the enclosed growing and finishing pig house during winter was measured at 0 to 0.19 m/s at the minimum ventilation efficiency of 1,440 $m^{3}/h$. During summer the air flow rate was detected at 0.07 to 0.42 m/s at the maximum ventilation efficiency of 24,000 $m^{3}/h$. Therefore, it is concluded that the side-wall ventilation system is suitable for growing and finishing pigs in the enclosed house during the days of mid-summer and the roof-ventilation system was suitable during the coldest days of mid-winter. In addition, although the enclosed pig house has the system in which air exhausts through only one side wall, air should enter through both-side walls for the better ventilation performance.

• Journal of Embryo Transfer
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.305-310
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• 2017

Miniature pig (minipig) has been considered as an important laboratory animal in the developmental biotechnology researches with respect to xenotransplantation, stem cell, somatic cell nuclear transfer and embryo transfer. Given that the laboratory minipigs are normally housed at an indoor facility, they pass the time with lying or sleeping unless it is feeding time. Therefore, it is necessary to provide environmental enrichments to satisfy their innate needs and to lessen atypical behaviors caused by stress, on the purpose of welfare. We quantitatively investigated the type of preferable enrichment for the laboratory minipigs as well as its effect on their daily life. They presented a great interest to the pliable pail but a rapid loss of attraction to non-preferable enrichments. When the daily life of the single housed minipigs was quantified based on duration of playing or resting, they were more actively engaged in lively activities in the presence of enrichments. In addition, the provision of enrichments could effectively alleviate the conflicts during group housing when new pen mate was introduced, resulting in reduction of wound cases. We believe the considerations of animal welfare are essential to the conduct of better research because animals in the non-stressful environment will be more physiologically stable and provide more reliable results in the animal experiments.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.29 no.12
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• pp.1756-1760
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• 2016

Estimation of feed intake (FI) for individual animals within a pen is needed in situations where more than one animal share a feeder during feeding trials. A partitioning method (PM) was previously published as a model to estimate the individual FI (IFI). Briefly, the IFI of a pig within the pen was calculated by partitioning IFI into IFI for maintenance ($IFI_m$) and IFI for growth. In the PM, $IFI_m$ is determined based on the metabolic body weight (BW), which is calculated using the coefficient of 106 and exponent of 0.75. Two simulation studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that the use of different coefficients and exponents for metabolic BW to calculate $IFI_m$ improves the accuracy of the estimates of IFI for pigs, and that PM is applied to pigs fed in group-housing systems. The accuracy of prediction represented by difference between actual and estimated IFI was compared using PM, ratio (RM), or averaging method (AM). In simulation studies 1 and 2, the PM estimated IFI better than the AM and RM during most of the periods (p<0.05). The use of 0.60 as the exponent and the coefficient of 197 to calculate metabolic BW did not improve the accuracy of the IFI estimates in both simulation studies 1 and 2. The results imply that the use of $197kcal{\times}kg\;BW^{0.60}$ as metabolizable energy for maintenance in PM does not improve the accuracy of IFI estimations compared with the use of $106kcal{\times}kg\;BW^{0.75}$ and that the PM estimates the IFI of pigs with greater accuracy compared with the averaging or ratio methods in group-housing systems.

• Journal of Animal Environmental Science
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.7-12
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• 2006

Ammonia emission from swine production process originates from three major sources: manure storage facility, swine housing, and land application of manure. Most of the ammonia gas that are emitted from swine production operations is the by-product of aerobic or anaerobic decomposition of swine waste by microorganism. Knowing the ammonia emission rate is necessary to understand how management practices or alternative manure handling process could reduce impacts of this emission on the environment and neighbors. Ammonia gas emission from pig slurry is very difficult to predict because it is affected by many factors including wind speed of slurry surface, temperature or pH of the swine slurry, sort breed differences and classes, and diets. This study was carried out to effects of pH and temperature on ammonia gas emission from growing-finishing pig slurry. Treated far slurry in this study were pH and temperature. Results showed that pH of slurry variable changes 5, 6, 7, 8 upon an addition of NaOH and $HNO_3$, respectively. The temperature of the slurry which was contained in a water bath maintained at increasing levels ranging from 10 to $35^{\circ}C$. Ammonia emission rate of influenced pH and temperature such that the increase in pH or temperature resulted to an increase in ammonia emission. The ammonia gas was not detected at pH 5 and 6. Moreover, at a slurry of pH 8, the ammonia ranged from 28 to 60ppm and 8-29 ppm at slurry pH of 7 while temperature was 13 to $33^{\circ}C$. When slurry pH was>6, the ammonia emission was significantly increased according to rise in temperature in contrast to acid treatment of the pH. There was also a significantly increase in ammonia emission relative to slurry pH of 7 to 8. The above findings showed that to effectively reduce ammonia emission from slurry of growing-finishing pigs, the pH and temperature should be maintained a low levels.

• Journal of Animal Environmental Science
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.195-200
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• 2007

Management of odors is essential to swine industry in the Republic of Korea. This study was conducted to evaluate the odor removal efficiency of biofilter ducting systems. Rice straw and auto clave concrete(ALC) were used as filter medium. The ventilation fans(5 units, diameter: 500 mm) at the side wall of a growing pig housing were connected to a biofilter using a duct. The size of a biofilter is $2.5{\times}2{\times}1.2(W{\times}L{\times}H)$. The air velocities at the 300 mm above rice straw and ALC were 0.77 and 0.56 m/s, respectively. Ammonia concentration at the outlet of rice straw and ALC media were 2 and 3 ppm, respectively. Dust concentrations were also measured. The dust concentrations of rice straw and ALC were 93, $32\;mg/m^3$, respectively. There was no significant difference between filter mediums in terms of carbon dioxide concentrations(rice straw: 320, ALC: 270 mg/l). The concentration of hydrogen sulfide was stable over the experimentation. The actual concentrations of hydrogen sulfide were 4, 3 and 3 ppm at the days of 7, 21 and 36, respectively. These results suggest that biofilter ducting systems may remove odors from pig house effectively.

• Journal of Animal Environmental Science
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.205-215
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• 2010

Geothermal heat pump system (GHPS) is an energy-efficient technology that use the relatively constant and renewable energy stored in the earth to provide heating and cooling. With the aim of using GHPS as a heating source, it's possibilities of application in farrowing house were examined by measuring environmental assessment and sow's performance. A total of 96 sows were assigned to 2 pig housings (GHPS and conventional housing) with 48 for four weeks in winter season. During the experimental period, indoor maximum temperature in GHPS-housing was measured up to $26.7^{\circ}C$, average temperature could maintain $21.2^{\circ}C$. The mean value of dust levels and $CO_2$, $NH_3$ and $H_2S$ gas emissions were decreased in GHPS-housing compare with those of conventional housing. Litter size, birth weight, parity and weaning weight did not differ between housings. However, feed intake of sow in GHPS-housing was lower than that of conventional housing. In energy consumption for heating, electric power consumption increased in GHPS-housing than the conventional housing, a 2,250 kwh increase, whereas there is no fuel usage for heater in GHPS-housing. Amount of ground water circulated for heating in cold weather for earth heat exchanger was 8.4-12.9 ton per day. In conclusion, GHPS may have environmental benefits and effectiveness of heating in farrowing housing and affect the performance in sows.

• Journal of Animal Environmental Science
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.125-136
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• 1995

To use the earth heat for the pig housing, an underground heat exchanger has constructed in depth of 2.5m and 20m length. The temperature of the outlet air was max. 8 kelvin higher than that of inlet air in winter season. In spite of the -7$^{\circ}C$ outside temperature, it could keep the air temperature from the earth tube above zero degree. The heating performance was maximum in value of 3.25Wh/㎥ and average of 1.75Wh/㎥ by the airflow volume of 340㎥/h. The slope of relative humidity from outlet air has shown gentler than that of inlet air. By using the underground heat exchanger, it would be possible to prepare an relatively uniform relative humidity in the swine stalls. The temperatures on the earth, where PVC pipes are buried, have shown 10~12$^{\circ}C$ on March. This can reduce the difference between day and night temperature during this season by using the underground heat exchanger.

• Journal of Animal Environmental Science
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2008

Ammonia gas is one of the malodorous gases from swine production facilities, such as manure storage tank, manure fermentation facilities, and livestock houses, etc. Ammonia gas from swine house is being emitted at relatively low concentrations throughout the year. Therefore, livestock facilities were continuously ventilated to supply fresh air for respiration of the animals internal the livestock facilities. The swine facilities need very high ventilation rate to control the inside environmental conditions. The deodorization system of the livestock facilities must be developed considering the ventilation rates. The odor abatement system was installed in order to improve the internal environment of the naturally ventilated growing-finishing pig house. The system which distributes the deodorized air into inner space of the swine house by using plastic duct was installed. Since the internal environment, effected by the operation of the odor abatement system, is monitored by closing the winch curtain installed on the side wall of the pig house, the experiment was practiced at the season when the internal environment becomes aggravated, winter. The effects on the improvement in the internal environment of swine house by operating the odor abatement system are as follows ; 1. By re-distributing the air which was deodorized by the odor abatement system installed in the pig house, the result showed that the concentration of ammonia gas is decreased approximately 33.3% compared with that before operating odor abatement system. 2. The effect on the pig house's ammonia gas reduction was found that the ventilation rate was less than $0.5m^3$/min head. The effect of the operation of the odor abatement system showed to be scarce when the ventilation rate increases because of the influx of external fresh air makes the quantity of diluted air more than those of the odor abatement system. 3. The perishment rate of the pigs which were brooded until slaughtering decreased about 3.8% by operating the odor abatement system in the growing-finishing pig house. Also, after operating the odor abatement system, the stinging of the eyes, suspension dust, etc were decreased when going into swine house for management.