Assessment of poultry deep body temperature responses to ambient temperature and relative humidity using an on-line telemetry system

This article evaluates the effectiveness of using a telemetric deep body te mperature (DBT) measurement sq stem ill determining the effects of stressfu l combinations of ambient temperature (AT) and relative humidity (RH) condi tions on poultry. Three levels of ambient temperature (31, 34, and 37 degre es C) and two levels of relative humidity (50 and 80%) were considered. Tre atments were applied using a Latin square design and repeated measures of d eep body temperature were made during 5 h exposures, Results showed that th e measured responses were consistent among all birds, significantly, differ ent for the different environmental conditions, and a change in response fr om one set of conditions to the other was clearly attributed to the change in AT and RH conditions and not to fluctuations in the measurement system o r in between bird variation. This ability to detect DBT responses to differ ent environmental conditions in real time could be used as the stepping sto ne for developing more optimal closed loop environmental controllers which use DBT responses as a feedback variable.