ABSTRACT
The thermal environment inside a broiler house has a great influence on animal welfare and productivity during the production phase. Enthalpy is a thermodynamic property that has been proposed to evaluate the internal broiler house environment, for being an indicator of the amount of energy contained in a mixture of water vapor and dry air. Therefore, this study aimed to characterize the spatial variability of enthalpy in a broiler house during the heating phase using geostatistics. The experiment was conducted in the spring season, in a commercial broiler house with heating system consisting of two furnaces that heat the air indirectly, in the first 14 days of the birds' life. It was possible to characterize enthalpy variability using geostatistical techniques, which allowed observing the spatial dependence through kriging maps. The analyses of the maps allowed observing problems in the heating system in regions inside the broiler house, which may cause a thermal discomfort to the animals besides productive and economic losses.
Key words:
poultry farming; thermal comfort; geostatistics; kriging; chicks.
