Energy, Production and Environmental Characteristics of a Conventional Weaned Piglet Farm in North West Spain

Abstract

Postweaning is one of the most sensitive and energy-demanding phases of swine production. The objective of this research was to assess the energy, production and environmental characteristics of a conventional farm with temperature-based environmental control. The selected energy, environmental and production variables were measured on farm, in a high livestock density area of NW Spain, for seven production cycles. The quantification of variables was aimed at obtaining the maximum performance with the lowest possible use of resources, focusing on animal welfare and production efficiency. The Brown–Forsythe, Welch and Games-Howell tests revealed significant differences in terms of temperature, relative humidity and CO2 concentrations among production cycles, and among the critical, postcritical and final periods. Improved humidity management resulted in a 17% reduction of climate control energy, which involved energy savings in the range of 33% to 47% per kg produced at the end of the postweaning cycle. Accordingly, adding humidity as a control variable could result in higher ventilation rates, thereby improving animal welfare, reducing heating energy use and increasing weight gain per unit climate control energy. In addition, the strong correlations found between heating energy and relative humidity (R2 = 0.73) and ventilation energy and CO2 (R2 = 0.99) suggest that these variables could be readily estimated without additional sensor costs.