Economic feasibility of acclimatization system of laying hens aviary

• Autor(a) principal: Kodaira, Vanessa [UNESP]
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Pereira, Danilo Florentino [UNESP], De Freitas Bueno, Leda Gobbo [UNESP], Soares, Nilce Maria, Salgado, Douglas D'Alessandro, Lelis, Ana Laura Januário [UNESP]
• Tipo de documento: Artigo de conferência
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/11449/172351
• topic: Animal welfare; Economic analysis; Environmental control; Feasibility studies; Poultry housing

Aiming at a bigger economy in the production process, in the late 90s a mechanization and automation process of the poultry houses was started in Brazil. The density was increased, worsening the environmental conditions for laying hens and causing decrease in food intake and physical activities, as well as production losses, such as decrease in the amount of produced eggs and increase of mortality. Few Brazilian companies offer the birds a suitable environment for them to reach their maximum productivity, because there is a belief among the producers that acclimatization does not provide financial return. It is important that the producer is made sure that the acclimatization provides better profitability due to increased productive performance of the birds. The research aimed to verify the efficiency of an automated acclimated shed for laying hens and its economic feasibility, compared to an automated non-acclimated one, on a farm located in Bastos, SP. The research was conducted from April 2013 to April 2014. Thermal environment was evaluated by comparing dry bulb temperature values, relative humidity and black globe temperature recorded by data loggers distributed inside the sheds. The Black Globe Temperature and Humidity Index was calculated from the collected data. The data were compared between the sheds by Mann-Whitney test at 5% of significance. The data of eggs production were recorded daily to obtain the number of eggs produced and the revenue from the sales of eggs, mortality of birds, feed intake to obtain the feed cost, power consumption to calculate the cost of electric power, implementation costs and maintenance of the acclimated system to determine the depreciation of the equipment, labor cost and administrative expenses. From the revenue and costs obtained, the profit margin was calculated for both aviaries. It was observed that the acclimated shed did not show the expected economic gain, although it had better thermal environment, higher productivity and better eggshell quality.