Author：Sheng Chung-Teh, Department of Bio-Industrial Mechatronics Engineering, National Chung Hsing University

In tropical and subtropical regions where the climate is usually hot and humid, poultry farms need to be insulated and damp-proof and most of them use open or semi-open facilities. In order to improve the efficiency of poultry production management, source traceability and control of infectious diseases, as well as to develop domestic colored broilers, the high-performance closed poultry houses suitable for high-humidity and warm-temperature environment are introduced with digital environmental data collection and environmental regulation functions. Kai Shing Food Corp. built the new closed chicken houses with negative pressure ventilation system in 2017 and installed environmental monitoring sensors in each house for monitoring and environmental data collection.

The installation of an environment monitoring network system in poultry farms involves many factors for consideration. Regardless of future promotion, the major considerations are the types of the chicken house, the size of farm, the environmental control equipment and related strategies adopted, etc. If consideration is given to the future possibility of package plant export to tropical countries such as those in Southeast Asia, the cost would be an important factor. The top consideration is to meet the conditions of environmental control of the poultry farms at the lowest cost. Then, the related big data collected on the poultry house environment can be analyzed as the basis for starting new businesses like entrusted management of broiler production and management and diagnosis service. The environment adjustment equipment adopted may include the cooling and disinfectant spraying system, negative pressure ventilation, the air inlet louver, and encoders. The major strategy of environmental control is to achieve adequate ventilation by controlling the negative pressure fan and the cooling and disinfectant spraying system based on the designated temperature and humidity, and by controlling the size of opening of the air inlet louver and the ventilation wind speed. That is, each environmental control device is based on two pieces of environmental monitoring data. For example, only the air inlet louver opening is open and the negative pressure ventilation is turned on when the humidity is too high. However, If the temperature is also high, a small amount of spray cooling is activated, and the opening of the air inlet louver and the negative pressure fan is turned wider. The environmental control strategies can be improved based on the accumulated experience, and finally developed into an expert system. In order to achieve the environmental control purposes at the lowest cost for the poultry houses mentioned above, the two basic devices are the sensors of temperature and humidity and the wind speed. Therefore, in each poultry house, there is an indoor temperature sensor (PT100), an indoor humidity sensor, and a hot-wire anemometer. Each poultry house is also equipped with a camera module and drinking water record (see Figure 1).

For the information transmission from the poultry house to the management office, necessary considerations include the distance of transmission, the flow of information (such as video information), possible obstacles such as big trees, and the cost. As the distance from the manager’s office to the poultry house can be as far as 400 meters, and video information transmission is needed, both the wireless WiFi and the Ethernet wired network systems are used to meet the demand and to minimize the installation cost (see Figure 1).

Kai Shing Food Corp. uses the intelligent management system (see Figure 2) to integrate the monitoring network system of the poultry farm, which controls the entire farm at high precision, low labor input and lower frequency of workers’ entry to the poultry house. This also means minimum interference with the chickens’ egg laying behavior, and better practice for epidemic prevention. Other than the environmental control of the poultry house, this system can also perform automatic control of operations such as lighting, egg collection, and litter removal. Currently, the set time is used as the control parameter. In the future, egg production performance analysis and the egg production record system will also be incorporated to further develop into a smart system.