Page 8 - National Poultry Newspaper

Water is evenly distributed when litter is well mixed. When water is removed only from the sur- Heating the litter will assist the moisture to evaporate and free the liquid to move into the air face of the litter, the dry surface acts as a blanket and retains the water below the surface. easily.
Air speed at the litter surface has a strong impact on the evaporation rate.
• Removing moisture and ammonia from the flooring
Warming the air also warms the litter – as per the Avaigen broiler handbook, the recom- mendation is to pre-heat the litter and floor to 30C for at least 24 hours before placement, ensur- ing the flooring is warm and dry for the chicks.
Once the moisture has moved into the air, it is critical to ventilate it out of the shed, otherwise the humidity will only increase.
Drying litter before chick placement
tribute to cost efficien- cies, in that when run- ning heaters and the hot air rises to the roof, cir- culation fans bring the heat back down, making use of what has already been paid for.
IN May 2021, AgriFu- tures facilitated a we- binar with Queensland Department of Agricul- ture and Fisheries prin- cipal environment engi- neer Mark Dunlop dis- cussing the benefits and how-to of drying litter before chick placement.
the growers who provid- ed litter samples for ex- periments, together with information and ideas.
orating 1L of water off the flooring, only about 125ml will be removed after one day if the lit- ter is not stirred and the moisture brought to the surface.
The research was fund- ed by the AgriFutures chicken meat research, development and exten- sion program and the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fish- eries, and supported by
The reasons for drying litter before chick place- ment include:
Warming the air reduc- es the relative humidity in the atmosphere.
Heating the air will re- duce the relative humid- ity.
In the webinar, Mark considered the factors of heating, air speed and litter tilling and their ef- fects on drying the litter in meat chicken sheds.
“It’s time to stir things up,” Mark said.
Adding heat
Low relative humidity
• Ensuring the flooring is warm and dry for the day-old chicks
The general rule of thumb is that by increas- ing the air temperature by 10C, the relative hu- midity is reduced by half.
The target is an RH of less than 50-60 percent, so the air has the capac- ity to absorb liquid from the litter.
• Increasing water holding capacity of the litter during brooding
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• Saving on heating costs – not using as much heat to keep flooring warm.
Essentially, the aim is to warm the air to absorb the liquid from the litter, then ventilate it out of the shed.
Scenario for considera- tion
To evaporate water from the litter, the mois- ture in the litter needs to be brought to the surface, heating the litter and the air will assist with this, as will air speed and air with low relative humid- ity, giving the air more capacity to absorb water.
Heating the litter will also assist the moisture to evaporate – it frees the liquid to move into the air easily.
You’ve received damp bedding at about 30 per- cent moisture content as you prepare your sheds for placement of chicks.
These four components are essential in evapo- rating moisture from the litter and important for the comfort of the day- old chicks, which is the priority.
Air speed at the litter surface has quite a strong effect on the evaporation rate.
The questions arising are how dry do you want the litter to be, how long will it take to get that dry and what can you do to dry it quicker?
Does this mean turning on more fans, using cir- culation fans, turning up the heat, tilling the litter, and does the weather af- fect the drying of the litter?
One of the challenges with meat chicken sheds in Australia is that the air flow in a shed is gen- erally driven by exhaust fans.
Because so many fac- tors are taken into ac- count – air speed, heat and tilling the litter – it is difficult to track which factor or which combina- tion of factors has the greatest effect.
Here are the four com- ponents in more detail. Bringing moisture back to the surface
One way to conserve that heat is to use cir- culation fans within the shed.
Mark compiled a spreadsheet to assist in change calculations and the impact of each ele- ment, and goes into de- tail using various loca- tions around Australia to answer the above ques- tions.
As water is taken off the surface of the lit- ter when drying, the dry surface acts as a blanket over the litter.
Michael Czarick and the team at the Univer- sity of Georgia’s Depart- ment of Poultry Science have been developing and evaluating a system of circulation fans to generate air speeds of about 0.8-1m per second within a shed – useful for drying the litter.
To view this webinar and find out more on drying litter before chick placement, visit extensio naus.com.au/chickenme atrde/category/webinars/
When this occurs, it stops the water from moving up through the litter and into the air.
When the litter is well mixed, the water is even- ly distributed.
Circulation fans con-
Air speed
If trying to create air speed in a shed, particu- larly if running heaters, using fans will exhaust the warm air out.
Page 8 – National Poultry Newspaper, August 2021
The drying rate reduces to 85 percent after 24 hours, so instead of evap-
Dr Mark Dunlop of the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries presented the webinar on drying litter before chick placement.
www.poultrynews.com.au
Stirring the litter and bringing wet litter to the surface will help remove more moisture.
Without moving the lit- ter and tilling it, experi- ments show the water evaporation rate is re- duced by 40 percent after 4-6 hours and after 12-15 hours by 70 percent – a drying rate of only 30 percent.