Modelling growth performance of pigs and within-room thermal balance in different local conditions

Nathalie Quiniou et al., 70th Annual Meeting of the European Federation Animal Science (EAAP), 26-30 août 2019, Ghent, Belgique, visuels d'intervention

A model has been used to assess both direct and indirect consumption of energy by growing pigs fed ad libitum, housed in fattening rooms with various insulation characteristics, and under different outdoor temperatures. This model combines a growth model and a bioclimatic model. It simulates thermal exchanges at the room level, based on interactions between the insulation of the room, available equipment (fans, heaters…), the parameters of the climate control box, the characteristics of pigs, and the feeding strategy. Heat sources are the animals (sensible heat) and heaters when available. Heat losses are due to insulation characteristics of the room and air renewal. The model has been evaluated from data collected simultaneously on pigs, diets, indoor and outdoor temperature (T) during a trial, and the error of prediction of indoor T was below 0.5 °C on an hourly basis. Thereafter, simulation will be performed, based on the same population of pigs and feeding strategy under different outdoor T, different heater powers in the room combined with different insulation level of wall material. For this purpose, four time series of outdoor T have been collected over 12 months (one in France and three from South to North in Sweden), as well as building characteristics in both countries (heater power: from 0 to 26 Watt/fattening place; 1 or 3 insulated layers).

For each combination of climate and building, indoor T and pig performance will be simulated as well as total energy consumption and its partition between direct and indirect components. This research was part of the Pigsys ERA-Net project, co-funded under European Union’s Horizon 2020 RI program (from SuSan, www.era-susan.eu,Grant Agreement n°696231) by the French ANR (grant n°ANR-16-SUSN-0003-02).