Thursday, December 30, 2010

How dust can affect air flow inside the tunnel ventilation house?

Accumulated dust on the plastic shuttle of the ventilation fans will definitely affect the air flow of the tunnel ventilation poultry house. But to what extent?
We have made a study by leaving the plastic shuttle unattended for 36days. Dust accumulated about 3 to 5mm thick on the edges of the shuttles. The shuttles were no long able to open fully as its used to be. The wind speed measured before flock placement was average 2.9 m/s. Whereas after 36days of the unattended condition, the wind speed reading was dropped to 2.2 m/s. The average wind flow was dropped by 25%. To confirm the dust effect on wind speed, we cleaned all the plastic shuttle and measured the reading again. The outcome is, the wind speed immediately back to normal that was 2.9 m/s.
Therefore, in order to have a consistent air flow for your tunnel ventilation house, weekly cleaning of  plastic shuttles must not be omitted!




Typical worst example of dust full plastic shuttle.

After cleaning condition.


How pan feeding system works?

Poultry pan feeding system is an automatic feeding equipment which makes feeding work much easier, consistent and less labour dependant.
A pan feeding system is a series of pan feeders that are attached to a galvanised tube with an auger inside driven by a gear motor to convey feed along the tube and distribute to every pan which is attached to it. The length of the galvanised tube is in 10 feet or 12 feet long. One piece of tube can be attached 2 to 4 pan feeders. It can be jointed one after the other up to a maximum  length of 500 feet which we called it a 'line'. The number of feeding line need to be installed is depended on the width of your poultry house.  To complete the line, the begining of line is attached with a hopper to receive feed form the feed silo through feed transportation auger and the end of line is attached with the gear motor. At the end of line, there is a control pan attached before the gear motor to stop the auger from running when feed is reached to the end of line. When the birds eat, the pan automatically refills. The height of the pan can be adjusted to suit the age of the bird by mean of winch.

Monitoring temperature and humidity condition in tunnel ventilation house

To begin the process of monitoring, we recorded down the actual temperature and humidity condition inside and outside of the tunnel ventilation poultry house for future study purposes.
  1. Outside the house, temperature reading was 31.8 degree C and relative humidity reading was 57.8%.
  2. Outside the house at cooling pad area, temperature reading was 31.8 degree C and relative humidity reading was 57.3%.
  3. Inside the house at cooling pad area, cooling pad temperature reading was 22.8 degree C, inside room temperature reading was 26.5 degree C and relative humidity reading was 77.2%.
  4. Inside the house at middle of the house, room temperature reading was 27.8 degree C and relative humidty reading was 77.2%.
  5. Controller temperature shown 27.7 degree C.
  6. Outside roof temperture reading was  35.7 degree C (roof material is PVC 2mm thick).
  7. Inside drop ceiling temperature reading was 29.7 degree C(ceiling material is metal deck).



At the time we measured these readings, the birds were 37 days. 10 Fans were running in full swing. Wind speed was measured average 2.95 m/s. The cooling pad pump was running on 2 mins on-time and 6 mins off-time. The variation of room temperature was between 27.7 to 28.9 degree C. The humidity were controlled very well, as we can see that the related humidity at the cooling pad area and at the middle of the house were almost the same reading, that was RH 77.2%. This showed the litter moisture was very less and so as the ammonia level. We can presume this poultry production was maintained  at an optimum condition during that period of time.