Índices de conforto térmico em aves de produção: revisão sitemática

Abstract

The thermal comfort and ambience are subjects of study that aims to achieve animal well-being. There are several studies that cite thermal comfort indexes and variables suitable for poultry breeding, nevertheless, it was not found any survey per category, such as broiler chicken, layer hens and breeders. Considering this issue importance, the present study aimed to elaborate a systematic review on environmental variables and thermal comfort indexes for poultry (broiler chicken, layer hens and broiler breeders). This systematic review was accomplished through search and selection of complete papers published on scientific journals, within three digital data banks (Scopus, Scielo and PubMed) from a total of 20.148 selected papers, just 60 were included at this review data bank. The used criteria for papers selection were publications on national and international journals, and papers containing data regarding performance and environmental variables or thermal comfort indexes. The selected papers complete version was severely evaluated regarding its quality and relevance. In the data bank created for this review, the broiler chicken category contributed with 66.66% of the papers, layer hens appeared in 31.66% of the scientific reports, and broiler breeders in 1.6%. For the broiler chicken and layer hens categories, it was observed presence in 80% of international publications for the earlier, and 84.21% for the later. The temperature parameter was the environmental variable with most occurrence in the studies for all the considered categories. Within the 60 papers analyzed in this systematic review, only 20% of it calculated thermal comfort indexes. This leads us to conclude that, considering this study timeline, thermal comfort indexes for poultry, although present increasing research evolution, are tools that need to be more explored in studies aiming thermal comfort for poultry breeding.