1507
Control of Water Consumption in Swine Barns; One Step-Closer to Real Time Management
Providing enough quality water is essential for good livestock husbandry. Given that drinking water needs are farm- and management- specific, water-metering equipment’s to obtain accurate measurements of water use should be applied in each location. The aim of this study was to use new technologies to monitor and predict daily water consumption of fattening pigs.
In order to monitor water consumption, a real-time sensor monitoring system was installed and set in the fattening unit of one Spanish commercial swine farm. The fattening unit consisted of two buildings, both including about 1000 pigs. Each building was filled with one-only batch of pigs, 60 days of life at the entrance. Pigs were allotted in pens of 10 pigs, with a stock density of 0.70 m2/pig, natural ventilation, partly slatted concrete flooring and one hopper and one cup drinker per pen. Feed and water were available ad libitum. The metering system consisted in one flow and one temperature sensors, connected to a processing unit which polled the data from these devices and uploaded it to the database. Four batches of pigs were followed up in each building, registering water intake, room temperature and daily control of mortality and health. Water consumption was daily calculated per pig from 60 to 150 days of life. Simple linear regression was conducted to predict water intake in L per animal and day from age in days using the REG procedure of SAS.
As expected, water consumption was highly correlated to age (r square = 0.72). In the experimental farm where this measurement was conducted, the most statistically valid equation to predict water consumption was y=0.0324x – 0.2081, where y is individual daily water intake (L) and x is age in days. Therefore, an average water consumption range of 1.73 to 4.65 (at 60 to 150 days of age) L per animal and day was obtained. Values found in bibliography differ significantly among different authors and are higher than the mean values obtained in the present study, being the average difference 22.4% with the lower interval reviewed in the bibliography and 48.9% with the upper one.
This system allows monitoring water consumption in a particular facility and then detecting in an early stage any significant deviation of water intake from the expected range. In addition, knowing water consumption in detail also allows ensuring proper dosing rate of medication provided through the watering system.
Keywords: Water consumption; Monitoring; Pigs