Abstracts - Facilities and equipment

After a 7-wk composting period, Salmonella spp. and vaccine strains of Bovine herpesvirus-1 and Bovine viral diarrhea virus were inactivated using the composting system.

Visit duration of an animal at the single-space feeder was influenced by both direct and social effects when the replacement time between visits was less than 1 minute.

The developed algorithm based on video data has potential to be used for contactless heart rate measurement.

Certain pen modifications resulted in fewer tail damaged pigs and a better overall welfare assessment, despite a tendency for more tail-directed behaviour.

A motion monitoring system based on artificial vision may be used indoors to trigger suspicions of fever.

The air heat pump system has great potential to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Two-level systems may reduce aggressive behaviour and social stress in pigs.

Method capable of monitoring feeding behaviour of pigs, without the need for additional sensors or individual marking.

The methods derived from this study open up avenues to further investigate airborne transmission and risk of virus introduction into farms contributing to the control of diseases in swine.

Narrower slat and gap widths may provide benefits in terms of feet health and sow comfort without compromising manure management and air quality.

Sodium hypochlorite, glutaraldehyde, caustic soda and potassium peroxymonosulfate showed the best ASFV inactivation rates.

A new slurry system with U-shaped slurry trays with flushing or scraping can handle slurry with a high amount of straw and can reduce the emissions of ammonia and odour from pig houses.

Adding ramps to nursery pig housing is a simple way to speed loading of market hogs, while providing benefits to efficiency and behavior in the nursery.

Pig activity changes can be recorded using passive infrared detectors which could serve as a monitoring tool for early detection of behavioral changes.

A 3D machine vision system has the potential to automate tail posture detection and provide early warning of tail biting on farm.

Grow-finish pigs located in peripheral pens had greater body temperatures and reduced gain-to-feed ratios despite similarities in pen ambient temperature and relative humidity between all pens.

Computational fluid dynamics model outputs could provide insight on which environmental drivers affect pigs’ lying location choice, even before a hog building is built and stocked.

The stress conditions with the highest accuracy in the detection were cold and thirst. Infrared skin temperature is a promising assessment of stress conditions.

A higher set-point temperature significantly lowered odour emissions compared to the reference, and had the potential to lower NH3 emissions.

Wood appears to be a safe material to use as environmental enrichment for pigs and a softer wood species were preferred by pigs with equal preference for the rubber floor toy.

The more straw provided (between 10 and 500 g) the higher the daily weight gain. The feed conversion ratio was not affected by the amount of straw provided.

The objective was to determine the effects of varying the number of pigs per feeder hole and group size on feed intake onset, growth performance, and lesions in nursery pigs.

According to the results, the same sow behavior can have different consequences in pens vs. in crates.