The Saint Gilles respiration chamber facilities

Location :

The respiration chamber facilities are located in Saint-Gilles, near Rennes, at the UMR SENAH (Livestock Production Systems, Animal and Human Nutrition) research unit. Approximately 35 permanent researchers work at the unit as well as 20- 25 PhD-students and post-doctoral researchers. The UMR SENAH research unit is part of the INRA divisions Phase (Animal Physiology and Livestock Systems) and AlimH (Human Nutrition).

The unit:

The UMR SENAH research unit carries out research that finds its application in both animal husbandry and human nutrition. In both cases, the pig is the most frequently used animal model. This animal is used to improve the sustainability and competitiveness of swine production systems through the reduction in production costs and by adapting animal products to consumer and citizen demands. Human-oriented research focuses on the use of nutrition as a means to improve human health. The scientific approaches used range from studying gene expression, studies on the organs and physiological functions, to the impact of a swine production system on the environment.
Additional information is available on the web site of the research unit: http://w3.rennes.inra.fr/senah/

The research teams:

The unit is composed of five research teams including the team « Nutrition and Metabolism ». The main objective of this team is to better understand the metabolism at the different physiological stages to propose practices that allow exploiting the production potential of the animal while accounting for the animal’s well-being, the environment and the expectations of consumers and citizens.

The respiration chamber facilities:

Within the team « Nutrition and Metabolism », the respiration chambers facilities are used to study energy nutrition in animals to evaluate the energy utilization of different feeds and to quantify energy requirements of animals. In these studies, heat production is a main indicator of the metabolic utilization of energy, and heat production is estimated from gas exchanges in open-circuit respiration chambers. The techniques used allow realizing complete energy balances but also quantifying the different components of heat production using modeling techniques. The climatic conditions in the respiration chambers can be controlled with precision and, for temperature, can be varied between 5 and 35°C. Three respiration chambers are available (two of 12 m3 and one of 2 m3).
The experimental studies realized between 1980 and 2000 mostly concerned the pig (piglet, growing pig or sow) to further refine feed evaluation systems and to quantify energy requirements of the animal according to physiological stage or environmental conditions. Since 2001, studies on broilers, veal calves, minipigs and turkeys have also been realized.