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Research on the concentrations of aerial pollutant gases in tropical livestock buildings is needed in order to establish baselines for exposure limits in context of animal and human welfare in the tropical environments. The concentrations of aerial ammonia, nitrous oxide, methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide in selected pigpens in the Owerri area of Imo State, Nigeria were measured during the month of August 2002. These were thereafter correlated with pig building measurements in order to determine the possible influence of building measurements on concentration of the gases. Overall mean aerial concentrations of carbon monoxide CO (2.7 ± 0.34 ppm) was the highest mean value recorded and was followed by the 1.4 ± 0.0 ppm and 0.07 ± 0.14 ppm recorded for flammable gas (methane) and hydrogen sulfide respectively while the 0.0 ± 0.0 ppm recorded for ammonia was lowest. The average length of the buildings was 64.20 ft., while 21.40 ft., 11.60 ft and 4.35 ft. were obtained for width, height and sidewalls respectively. In all pens, the simple linear regression was not significant (P

This study was carried out to identify the common moulds growing in selected commercial poultry feed sold in Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. Forty-eight bulk samples derived froml92 bags of feeds were collected from broiler starter (BS), broiler finishers (BF), grower mash (GM) and layer mash (LM) across 4 different brands of ommercial poultry feeds, which included Livestock (LF), Top (TF) Guinea (GF) and Vital (VF) feeds. The feed samples were collected during the rainy season months of June, July and August. The common moulds isolated from these feeds were Aspergillus sp., Peicillium sp.,Mucor sp., Yeast sp., Rhizopus sp., Epicoecum sp., Gymnoaseus sp., Cladosporium sp., Mortierella sp. as well as Bacteria. Generally, more organisms were isolated in June than the other months with Mortierella sp. being the only one not isolated in that month. Vital feed with 8 different isolates had the highest diversity of fungal species while the others had between 4 and 5 species. Prevalence rates across the feed types, generally ranged from 18.76% in layer mash to 30.03% in broiler finisher. The four Aspergillus sp. isolated came from GM and BF. This study highlights the need for constant monitoring of moulds in commercial feedstuff produced in the humid tropical environments such as Imo state, Nigeria. There is also the need to routinely include fungal growth nhibitors in commercial feeds since moulds are capable of reducing the nutritional values of feedstuff as well as elaborating pathogenic toxins.

Research on the concentrations of pollutant gasses in tropical livestock buildings is needed in order to establish baselines for exposure limits in the context of animal and human welfare in tropica l environments. Concentrations of aerial ammonia NH , nitrous oxide (NO ), flammable gas (methane, CH ), 4 2 4 carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen sulfide (H S) and sulfur dioxide (SO ) were measured in five intensive layer 2 2 farms located Imo state during the month of August 2002. Data obtained were correlated with poultry house measurements in other to understand rates of increases of these pollutants as a result of changes in poultry house measurements. Overall mean aerial concentration of CO (3.11±0.73 ppm) was highest, followed by the 1.93 ± 0.14 ppm and 1.53 ± 0.71 ppm recorded for CH and H S respectively, while the 0.09 ± 0.19 ppm 4 2 and the 0.14 ± 0.20 recorded for SO and NH respectively were lowest. The range of 3.25 ± 0.7ppm to 2 4 4.0±0.0 ppm of CO obtained in the four pens FA, FB , FB and FC was significantly (P