Field Evaluation of a Novel Water Treatment System in Commercial Boiler Operations

• Giovanni Rollo, Animal Science, University of Delaware

• Hong Li, Department of Animal and Food Sciences, University of Delaware

In the broiler industry, water quality is an important aspect than can affect both the birds themselves as well as their environment. As such, implementing a novel water treatment system is a strategy that can aid in providing higher quality water by filtering out harmful materials in order for the birds to remain healthy. A water’s hardness, pH, and its contents of contaminants can cause a decrease in bird performance and an increase in illness, resulting in an increase in mortality and a decrease in revenue. This system has shown positive results in tests performed in controlled conditions, even causing a reduction in ammonia emissions. In order to identify if these results can be replicated in commercial broiler houses, this experiment endeavored to perform a field test and raise three broiler flocks separated into two houses with one of the two houses using the water treatment system. The birds of each flock were raised to approximately 63 days of age, while ammonia concentration, mortality, water consumption, bird weight, and litter moisture samples were collected weekly. The overall value of mortality came out as 8.07% for the control group, and 6.39% for treatment, with the average weight for control being 9.47 lb and treatment with 9.85 lb. In the economic aspect, the control group made 479.17$ for every 1000 birds, while the treatment group produced 618.57$ for every 1000 birds. However, variables like ammonia showed less pleasing values in the treatment group when compared to the control group, with an average of 14.83 ppm and 14.03 ppm respectively. Overall, the treatment group showed better over the control group, but only their average weight showed a statistically significant difference with a p-value of 0.044.