Mass Balance Applied to Brazilian Conventional Broiler Houses during One Production Cycle

ABSTRACT Brazil plays an important role in global poultry production as it is the world's largest chicken exporter and the third largest broiler producer. Despite the development achieved by the Brazilian broiler industry as a result of the integrated production system, many obstacles still need to be overcome, in particular, housing environment. In this regard, detailed knowledge of the inputs, outputs, and primary waste generated by broiler production cycles is essential to establish a baseline for energy balance research studies and to develop environmental solutions. This article proposes a mass balance of conventional broiler houses of southern Brazil sheds in order to predict their outputs, but that may also be applicable to other regions with similar climate. Control volumes considered the heating, cooling, and rearing processes. All generated products and wastes were estimated considering litter production and the total production per cycle. Despite the variety of the microclimates, the results were very close to those reported in experiments, indicating that this model is adequate for this kind of estimation.