The design of animal housing and manure management systems are key factors in livestock farming. Frequent removal
methods, in fact, allow for the reduction of gasses produced from fermentations of the organic matter contained in
manure, that affect animal welfare and farmer health and are emitted from animal housings into the atmosphere as a
consequence of ventilation. The present study aims to evaluate the performance of a Robotic Scraper (RS) operating on
the floors in a full-scale, operative free-stall dairy barn. The research is focused on the evaluation of gaseous emissions
from the two types of floors (concrete and rubber mat coated), and with and without RS operation. The floors with
rubber coating demonstrated higher emission rates of ammonia (NH3), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), and
methane (CH4) compared to the uncovered concrete floors, both before and after RS operations. The operation of RS,
furthermore, determined significant reduction of greenhouse gasses (GHG) but did not have relevant effect in terms
of NH3 emission, which reduced only of 1.4% from concrete floors, but increase of 12.7% from rubber coated floors.
