Aplicações da termografia infravermelha na produção animal

Abstract

The use of infrared thermography helps in the identification of distinct points where the radiant temperature differs due to the elevation or decrease in heat production, by changing the surface temperature and the heat transfer to the environment. The measurement of surface temperature or skin may be registered without interference in an individual's condition, and accurately in animals that have limited heat transfer, either feathers or fur. This work had as objective to analyze the use of infrared thermography in three separate experiments: 1) quantify the change in skin temperature in lactating sows subjected to adiabatic cooling, 2) calculate the loss of thermal load in hatchery chicks until you arrive at the farm of production and, 3) identify edema in swine. Thermographic images of animals were collected in study, using a thermal camera Testo® and generating images. The images were scanned from 10 points using the software IRSoft®. Were calculated averages of surface temperatures and submitted to Student's t test, with the reliability of 95. The results showed that 1) using thermal images identified the efficiency of use of adiabatic cooling, in which lactating sows in the afternoon showed a significant decrease in skin temperature ( 34.42 ± 1.25° C), when compared to the group without cooling (36.51 ± 1.51° C; 2) heat loss of chicks a day total heat loss found in the Hatcher was equivalent to 0.70 kcal h-1, while that in the vaccination room was 1.0 kcal h-1; 3) it was possible to identify the non-visible on the hind limb edema. The results showed the efficiency of infrared thermography to identify variations in surface temperature of production animals.