With rising concerns regarding avian influenza, many poultry producers are now thinking of the ways to filter the air in their poultry houses. However, getting clean air into these farms can be very costly and difficult. Nevertheless, with the complexity of and highly crowded poultry houses, with dust and air borne particles, air filtration has become critically important and a never ending concern for the poultry house owners and producers.
There are the poultry facilities where specially designed filtration systems have been installed in order to prevent external pathogens from entering the space. These completely-closed, filtered-air, positive pressure (FAPP) houses are usually used for carrying out disease research and producing eggs for the vaccine development where it is vital that fresh air entering inside is pathogen free. In a FAPP poultry house, external air is drawn through very powerful fans of high efficiency HEPA filters, capable to remove 99.97 % of the airborne particles with size 0.3 micrometers or larger. The air is pushed into the poultry house then and distributed by using a duct system. The exhaust outlets present in the house are comparatively small, which makes a very high positive pressure inside the house.
It is significant to consider that because HEPA filters are developed to eliminate very tiny particles, they can be quite restrictive to the air flow. As a consequence, the blower fans in a FAPP house utilize substantially higher power per CFM moved than that used in the typical poultry house. It should be kept in mind that all prevention efforts must first focus on proper farm biosecurity measures and practices. Quite simply, it is equipment, people, rodents, and wild birds etc, which are most likely the transmitters of particles. Another critical aspect of the poultry farm is that they are surrounded by fences to keep foreign transmitters of bacteria or germs, such as vehicles at a safe distance. Extreme caution must be taken while installing the filtration system on a poultry house.
The typical ventilation often times won’t be compatible. Heavy-duty ventilation systems are developed to manage the force needed to pull air through the kind of filter material required to eliminate the particles sizes that are of major concern. Air exchanges may be greatly decreased by filter material installation over air inlet openings. Overall, Proper air filtration in a poultry house is quite difficult and costly. Though filtering incoming air might prove a sound investment on certain farms having extremely precious birds (i.e. primary breeding stock), but for most of the producers, efforts should also be first focused around sound biosecurity practices.