Effectiveness of Various Cooling Systems during High Environmental Temperature on Production and Welfare Indices of Laying Pullets in Cage System of Rearing

The present study was conducted to determine the effect of different cooling systems; Fan Fogger (FF) and Fan Pad (FP) on micro environment of poultry house, thermal comfort, welfare, egg production and egg quality parameters of laying hens. This experiment was conducted on 144, White Leghorn laying pullets (32 weeks old) during hot-dry summer months (May-July) under cage system of housing. The FP and FF cooling systems significantly dropped the mean shed temperature and increased the relative humidity. Thus better THI leads to increase in egg production by 5.48% and 0.73% under FP and FF systems over the control group. However, specific gravity, H.U, egg shell thickness, yolk index and yolk colour were not significantly influenced by cooling treatments. Significantly lower levels of antioxidant enzymes viz. LPO, Catalase, G6PD, GPx and SOD was registered in cooling groups. Both the cooling devices contribute towards the bird welfare by altering the behavioural expression from agonistic to non agonistic activities. Under this study, it was concluded that Fan-Pad system could have better application in improving egg production and bird welfare in laying pullets during summer season.