Comportamento alimentar ao longo do dia e influência da temperatura e luminosidade na dinâmica de consumo voluntário individual de suínos em ambiente não-controlado

Abstract

The aim of this work was to evaluate the behavioral analysis of pig food consumption according to the time of day and the variation of humidity, temperature and luminosity in non-controlled environments. Measurements took place in 28 consecutive weeks, between August 2022 and March 2023, totaling 598 animals evaluated in 402,957 individual visits. Consumption was recorded through electronic feeding stations and temperature, humidity and luminosity through a data logger located inside an animal experimentation farm, which performed records every 10 min. The average of temperature, luminosity and humidity was corrected for the hour (6 measurements) to establish a relationship with the periods of consumption. The animals were housed at approximately 68 days of age and slaughtered at 164 days, totaling four different genetic crosses over the study period, with housing carried out every 28 days. Initially, only data on consumption dynamics were analyzed to establish the base model, correcting for sex, box-lot, week and time, and later, the parameters of luminosity and humidity were included separately, and then temperature and the Temperature Index. and Humidity (THI). All data were analyzed from a linear model using the lsmeans and emmeans R software packages. The results obtained showed that in pig farms with an uncontrolled environment, the animals present two well-defined consumption peaks, in the morning and in the afternoon, with luminosity and humidity having a relation of 1 with the base model and temperature and THI, 0.94 and 0.92 respectively. The natural feeding behavior of the pig allows the producer to stick to certain periods so that there is no shortage of feed in the feeders and to maximize performance.