Design and Construction of Thermal Control Solar Heated Poultry House

Introduction: Chickens in extensive and semi-intensive poultry production systems account for more than 75% of all poultry in the Southern Nigeria.

Aims: To design, construct and test a thermal control solar heated poultry house.

Methodology: Thermally controlled solar heated poultry house was designed and constructed in the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering Research Farm, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria. The poultry house consists of seven sections/rooms of which five rooms were regulated into five different temperature levels while one of the last two serve as control experiment section and the other serve as the observation section. The poultry house was tested and evaluated using developed and calibrated data logger to determine the environmental condition in the thermally controlled animal house with respect to the ambient conditions. The results obtained from the pre-stock test were analyzed graphically using Microsoft excel software version 2016

Results: The dry bulb temperature in the poultry house is 28.91±0.02ºC, 31.75±0.14ºC, 34.93 ±0.06ºC, 37.92±0.07ºC, 40.95±0.06ºC and 26.47±1.72ºC for sections with preconditioned temperature of 29ºC, 32ºC, 35ºC, 38ºC 41ºC and control respectively, dry bulb temperature in the poultry house is 20.39±0.32ºC, 21.64±0.1ºC, 19.13±0.2ºC, 17.57±0.27ºC, 16.26±0.27ºC and 24.77 ±0.1ºC for sections with preconditioned temperature of 29ºC, 32ºC, 35ºC, 38ºC 41ºC and control respectively, the relative humidity in the poultry house is 44.69±2.37%, 41.9±1.21%, 38.43±0.38%, 33.8.

Conclusion: There was little or no temperature stability in the non-thermally controlled section of the poultry house, the temperature of the thermally controlled section of the poultry house was found in a close range with low deviation from the preset temperature in the sections.