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Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
Factor Analysis of Downwind Odours from Livestock Farms
Posted in: Environment by admin on January 1, 2007 | No Comments
The livestock industry provides significant benefits to Ontario’s economy; however, the odorous emissions from livestock facilities have caused concern among their non-farming rural neighbours. Measurement and reduction of odour is necessary to maintain a clean environment and to achieve high standards in the production of livestock. Efforts to remediate odour from livestock production facilities have been impeded by the limited understanding of the odour itself and lack of odour evaluation techniques. Livestock odour results from over 165 compounds and their interactions with each other. A variety of factors contribute to their generation, such as relative humidity, wind speed, air temperature, etc. (Zahn et al., 2001). Over the past few decades, research has been conducted to adequately model livestock farm odours, but with little success. These studies have provided evidence that the contributing factors such as environmental conditions should be incorporated into an odour analysis model. However, previous models have only analysed the influence of single factors on odour level and did not investigate their combined effect. Moreover, the relative significance of these contributing factors to odour strength has not been investigated. The aims of this study are to identify the factors that may impact people’s perception of livestock farm odour intensity, and to analyse the effects of the factors on the strength of downwind odour. Odour emissions from livestock operations in Ontario have raised significant public concerns. In this study, downwind odour measurements were conducted during a 7-week period in July and August in 2004. The study involved taking measurements at two poultry farms, six dairy farms, and six pig farms in southern Ontario using both human assessor observed Nasal Ranger field olfactometers and an electronic nose developed in our research laboratory. By analyzing the data collected, it was shown that livestock odour strength is affected by various factors, such as distance to the source and air temperature. Therefore, components-only or single-factor analysis method cannot provide a satisfactory assessment, and a more thorough multi-component and multi-factor analysis is required. However, the results of this research show the promise of using human assessors and Nasal Rangers for downwind odour evaluation but there are a number of disadvantages. For instance, Nasal Ranger field Olfactometer has limited levels of dilution, and is therefore less accurate. Moreover, Nasal Rangers are difficult to overcome the assessors’ personal bias in odour measurement and evaluation, regarding the influences of many factors, such as age and health, and an individual’s background and experience, on the human sense of smell. Therefore, unbiased automatic odour evaluating technologies are desirable. Experimental results showed that the predicted odour strengths by the electronic nose yields high accuracy in comparison to the perceived data by human panel, and proved its capability of producing a qualitative output, its automation, lower operation cost, and greater consistency in odour measurement. However, further research and development are still needed in order to improve the electronic nose techniques for use in livestock farm odour measurements.
Dissolved Organic Carbon in Runoff and Tile-Drain Water under Corn and Forage Fertilized with Hog Manure
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This study compared the effects of mineral fertilizer (MF) and liquid hog manure (LHM) applications on the concentration and molecular size of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) released in runoff and tile-drain water under corn (Zea mays L.) and forage cropping systems. It was concluded that incorporation
of corn residues and LHM increased the concentration of
DOC and the relative size of the molecules in surface runoff water,
whereas DOC in tile-drain water was mostly influenced by the cropping
system with relatively more DOC and larger molecules under
forage than corn.
Precipitation of Liquid Swine Manure Phosphates Using Magnesium Smelting By-Products
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SOIL AND WATER QUALITY MONITORING TECHINIQUES
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Effect of urinations on the ammonia emission from group-housing systems for sows with straw bedding: Model assessment
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As ammonia is a polluting gas, the Dutch agricultural sector is committed to developing ammonia-emission reducing techniques. Furthermore, to improve animal welfare, Dutch pig farmers are using more straw bedding, especially for group-housed sows. A group-housing system for sows can be considered to have four different emitting surfaces: the slurry in the pits, the concrete surfaces of slats and of solid floors, and the straw bedding. Elsewhere (Groenestein et al., 2006), laboratory measurements of the volatilisation of ammonia from samples of these surfaces in response to the application of a dose of urine have been described and it was concluded that a urine pool on straw emits less ammonia than a urine pool of the same size on a slatted or solid floor. This implies that the spatial distribution of urinations influences the ammonia emissions from the house and that emission could be reduced by manipulating the surface the sows urinate upon. The objective of the study described here was to develop model simulations that estimate the effect of the size of the urine pool, the distribution of urine pools over the different emitting surfaces, and the size of the emitting surfaces. The aim was to assess whether the results of such simulations in combination with knowledge of the urinating behaviour of the sows could be important in designing the sow house to reduce environmental pollution (Bos et al., 2003). The reference data were from a house with a floor comprising 60% straw bedding, 14% drinking area (slatted floor with pit), 3% waiting area (slatted floor with pit) and 23% alley (solid floor). Simulations were performed to elucidate the effect of the distribution of the urinations over the different surfaces, relating this to the size and distribution of the urine pools, and the area of the surfaces urinated upon. The results were compared with emission data from an entire sow house. When the default settings were a urine production of 7 l/d per sow, a urination frequency of 5 times a day per sow, and urinations distributed evenly over the four emitting surfaces the model estimated the ammonia emission from the entire house as 11.7 g/d per sow, and the relative contributions of the straw bed, the drinking area, the waiting area and the alley as, respectively, 27%, 22%, 9% and 42%. By comparison, the actual emission from the house was 8.7 g/d per sow. Increasing the size of the urine pool from 0.14m² to 1.40m² in the model simulations caused ammonia emission initially to increase from 9.7 to 12.1 g/d per sow when the pool volume was 0.47m². If the pool was bigger, emission fell to 10.6 g/d per sow because, though the larger emitting area increases ammonia emission, the increase is outweighed by the reduction in emission caused by successive, superseding urinations on the same spot. If the entire emitting area was assumed to be straw bedding, the calculated emission from the house was 5.8 g/d per sow. Assuming slatted and concrete floors without straw bedding increased the emission to 16.5 g/d per sow. It is concluded that measures to reduce the ammonia emission from the bedded sow house should be aimed at decreasing the emission from the solid floor and/or allowing more urinations on the straw bed. The model is a useful design tool for achieving emission reduction from group-housing systems for sows with straw bedding. Its predictive power would be improved by inputting data on the actual size of the urine pool and urinating behaviour of sows.