Modelling the Dynamic Response of Chicken's Heat Production for Control Purposes

摘要

Present climate controllers in animal production units do not take into account any physiological or behavioural responses measured on the animal itself, although these bioresponses are most interesting for process information. An important step in the development of more optimal climate controllers, could be to measure and feed back relevant responses of the animal to its varying environment and to apply modern control theory to this process. To achieve so the dynamic relations between the process variables are modelled as a basis for a more optimal model based climate control. The objective of the research reported in this paper is to measure and model bioresponses of chickens to a varying physical environment as a basis for a more optimal climate control. More specific, laboratory experiments are carried out to measure the dynamic response of the heat production of broiler chickens to time variations in temperature and light-dark alterations. This biosystem is modelled using mathematical identification techniques. It is demonstrated that the complex process of the response of heat production of broiler chickens to changes in air temperature and light-dark alterations can be predicted, based on the developed dynamic models, with a relative prediction error ranging from 3.6 percent to 11.6 percent depending on the prediction horizon and the response variable considered. Such models can be used in a next step to develop a model based controller.