A comparison of production and economic performances of broilers raised under naturally ventilated open-house and tunnel ventilated closed-house systems in Sri Lanka.

The objective of this study was to compare production and economic performances of broilers raised under naturally ven-tilated open house (OH) and tunnel ventilated-closed house (CH) conditions in Sri Lanka. The analysis used production and economic parameters of 130 OH (130 farms) and 88 CH (5 farms) production cycles. Open house farms were select-ed using proportionate random sampling technique while closed houses were purposively selected. The sum of the Per-centages of mortalities and disable birds was significantly higher under OH system compared to that under CH system. The most vulnerable periods for the losses due to mortalities were the first week and from day 29-35 of the growing cycle. The mean length of the growing cycle under OH (38.4 days) was significantly higher than that of CH (34.6 days). OH operators reported a significantly lower number of growing cycles/year (4.4) with a longer clean-out period (44 days) compared to CH (6.9 cycles/year and 18 days, respectively). Production performance indicators such as mortality (3.3%), final live weight (1974 g), feed conversion ratio (1.56), performance efficiency factor (356) of broilers under CH were significantly better than those under OH system (4.5%, 1922 g, 1.94 and 254, respectively). Cost of feeds and day-old-chicks accounted for 74.7 and 23, and 66.6 and 24% of the total variable costs of OH and CH, respectively. Raising of broilers under CH conditions recorded significantly lower total cost (Rs 440), higher net profit (Rs 85.6 bird-1 and unit profitability (Rs 46.8 m-2 day-1) than under OH (Rs 453 and Rs 58.9, Rs 13.2 m-2 day-1, respectively). Production and economic performance indicators and resource utilization efficiencies (temporal and spatial) of broiler production were concluded to be significantly better under CH than OH system. Though production performance parameters of the broiler production, particularly under CH systems were comparable with those of countries having well-developed poultry industries; feed and day-old-chick costs were higher in Sri Lanka.