The stable was built from April to December 2017 and put into operation in January 2018. The stable has three identical compartments that can be adapted depending on the experimental setup. In the original form, the three compartments were designed with six pens for 23 animals each in a conventional, unstructured full-column system. In this context, three different exhaust air purification systems were tested in detail over two years (PigAir project, https://dafne.at/projekte/pigair ).
The stable was converted at the beginning of 2022 to address husbandry-related issues: two test compartments with rubber mats or a lightly littered, closed lying area are compared with a control compartment in terms of both animal welfare and emissions (project IBeSt https://dafne.at/projekte/IBeSt ). Before that and beyond, feeding tests were/are taking place in the research stable with regard to changes in gaseous emissions as well as odor and dust (PigAir II project, https://dafne.at/projekte/pigair-ii ).
The stable's ventilation system consists of a pore ceiling and central extraction. The exhaust air chimney is mounted horizontally on one side of the compartment and is around 8 m long. Through this, the exhaust air is directed to the downstream exhaust air purification systems in the northern outside area of the stable. This atypical design or arrangement of the exhaust air chimney is necessary for the gas engineering and olfactometric studies in order to ensure a laminar exhaust air flow at the sampling point. Feeding is carried out using a spot mix system (from Schauer Agrotronic) in short troughs with a sensor. The food can be presented both liquid and dry. To cool the stable and reduce heat stress, cool pads were installed, which enable a maximum temperature reduction of around 4-6 Kelvin.
Here you can look into an original, unstructured full-slatted mast bay as well as the new, converted compartment with two large IBeSt bays. Below is a look at the new lying areas with rubber mats or with a closed, lightly strewn floor (© HBLFA Raumberg-Gumpenstein).
