Sprinkling and Fogging Systems for Dairy Farms
One of the biggest problems faced by dairy farmers in south India is the high temperatures. High temperatures adversely affect health of the animal and milk yield in summer. The simplest way to keep the animals cool is take the animals to a water body like a pond or a water stream and leave the buffaloes in water for atleast 4 hours a day. The problem with this approach is that not all dairy farmers have access to a pond or a river and also this is not practical for big dairy farms. So the alternative is to install foggers within the shed and sprinklers above the shed. These have cost overhead and might not be practical for a small dairy farmer. Pressurized water is used to operate Sprinklers and Foggers operate based pressurized water released at regular intervals. A pressure boosting pump is installed to generate water pressure. A timer device is used to operate the pump at a pre-configured time intervals.
Sprinklers
Sprinklers are fitted on the roof top of the shed and they sprinkle the water on to the roof top at regular intervals. These look similar to water sprinkling in drip irrigation. When water is sprinkled on to the roof top, the inner air does not heat up and keeps the inner temperature at lower level. For sprinklers, the water pipeline has to be laid near the center top of the roof. The water pipes are 32 mm thick. Each sprinklers is placed at a gap of 10 to 15 feet. They spray covers a radius of 10 to 12 feet. If gunny curtains are tied at the end of asbestos sheets/roof, water falling from the roof will wet the gunny curtain. This will cool the air entering the shed because of the wet gunny curtains. The water falling on the groud will also keep the area cool.
Foggers
Foggers are small nozzles which produce very fine water droplets which looks like fog or mist. These are also called misters or mist system. Most of these generated droplets evaporate before they can reach to the ground. As they evaporate, they reduce the shed temperature. These are installed below the roof of the shed and 20 mm PVC 2.5 mm thick water pipelines should be installed within the shed. Foggers are fixed to these pipelines. Each fogger should have a gap of 8 to 10 feet.
Conclusion
We have not implemented this system in our farm, so we cannot say much about the issues and the results. Just thought it will be useful for others and hence shared it here on the website.