ON-FARM TRIAL TO DETERMINE THE DURABILITY OF DIFFERENT CONCRETE SLATSFOR FATTENING PIGS

A full-scale, on-farm trial in a pig building with concrete floor slat s was initiated. The slats were made from seven different concrete com positions, including the reference concrete with ordinary portland cem ent, four concretes with different cements and two concretes with fly ash or silica fume addition. Of the slats made of reference concrete, some were treated with surface-impregnation treatments of an epoxy res in, fluosilicate and siloxane and others were overlaid with cement-bou nd surface layers of the products S and B (based on ground tuff). The degradation of the concrete slats at different distances from the wetf eeders, due to the chemical attack of lactic and acetic acids in feed spilled by pigs, was monitored at periodic intervals. A specially desi gned instrument was used to measure the reduction in the depth of slat s, and a standard texture-depth measurement technique was used to dete rmine the surface roughness of slats. After nine months of use, concre te deterioration could already be observed in front of the wetfeeders. Results to date indicate that only the concrete slats treated with ep oxy resin and those with the cement-bound surface layers of the produc ts S and B, appear to be significantly more resistant than the referen ce concrete slats. (C) 1997 Silsoe Research Institute.