Introduction: Chickens in extensive and semi-intensive poultry production systems account for more than 75% of all poultry in the Southern Nigeria. Aims: To design, construct and test a thermal control solar heated poultry house. Methodology: Thermally controlled solar heated poultry house was designed and constructed in the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering Research Farm, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria. The poultry house consists of seven sections/rooms of which five rooms were regulated into five different temperature levels while one of the last two serve as control experiment section and the other serve as the observation section. The poultry house was tested and evaluated using developed and calibrated data logger to determine the environmental condition in the thermally controlled animal house with respect to the ambient conditions. The results obtained from the pre-stock test were analyzed graphically using Microsoft excel software version 2016 Results: The dry bulb temperature in the poultry house is 28.91±0.02ºC, 31.75±0.14ºC, 34.93 ±0.06ºC, 37.92±0.07ºC, 40.95±0.06ºC and 26.47±1.72ºC for sections with preconditioned temperature of 29ºC, 32ºC, 35ºC, 38ºC 41ºC and control respectively, dry bulb temperature in the poultry house is 20.39±0.32ºC, 21.64±0.1ºC, 19.13±0.2ºC, 17.57±0.27ºC, 16.26±0.27ºC and 24.77 ±0.1ºC for sections with preconditioned temperature of 29ºC, 32ºC, 35ºC, 38ºC 41ºC and control respectively, the relative humidity in the poultry house is 44.69±2.37%, 41.9±1.21%, 38.43±0.38%, 33.8. Conclusion: There was little or no temperature stability in the non-thermally controlled section of the poultry house, the temperature of the thermally controlled section of the poultry house was found in a close range with low deviation from the preset temperature in the sections.

Poultry industry’s development in the past two decades and the need for increased animal protein sources in the hot regions of the world, require the need to develop housing system that is thermally controlled for optimal production. The research was carried out at Federal University of Technology Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. The facility consisted of a broiler house of 6 rooms enclosed by masonry sidewalls at the base and insulated plywood at the upper section of the house with each experimental room equipped with blower, suction fan and heater. The data were monitored at the most critical time of the day – 1 pm during the dry season. Experimental data were recorded using developed and calibrated data logger. The 5 experimental rooms are programed to 5 temperature levels (41, 38, 35, 32 and 29°C) characterizing extreme heat boundary conditions for broilers with fans programmed at 1.5 m/s air velocity. The aim of this study is to evaluate the thermal distribution in solid-wall broiler houses using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The CFD technique allows visualizing air flow according to different running condition for each room for exhaust fans, as well as other parameters. The simulation was used to determine the air temperature variation, inner wall temperature, external temperature, air velocity distribution, external wall heat flux, pressure and wall heat transfer coefficient in all the experimental rooms of poultry house. The simulated air flow pattern and temperature distribution in the experimental rooms were analyzed and the result revealed increase room temperature as the preset room temperature increases. However, the velocity profile in all the room shows buildup of air at the outlet vent due to turbulence created by the suction fans. The pressure profile across the rooms was relatively the same.