ANN 111: Principles of Animal Nutrition and Feed Technology (2+1)

DIRECT CALORIMETRY

• This is simple in theory, difficult in practice; sensible heat loss (heat of radiation conduction) from the animal body can be measured with two general types of calorimeters, adiabatic and gradient.
• The insensible heat (latent heat of water vaporized from the skin and the respiratory passages) is estimated by determining in some way the amount of water vapour added to the air, which flows through the calorimeter. For this, rate of airflow and change in humidity is measured.
• There are two kind of calorimeters
  • Adiabatic calorimeter
  • Gradient calorimeter