This is an article from Robert Plamondon's Poultry Newsletter that I recieve via email every month. I enjoy his articles very much. His latest is on the question of Artificial Lighting for Chickens during fall and winter. Since I recieve a lot of questions regarding lighting....I hope you enjoy. For more information, here is his website. www.plamondon.com/freerange.html
Artificial Lighting for Hens
Let me start by scoffing at the people who think that artificial lights are bad for hens. The fact is that lights are nowhere near so effective as people think they are. On modern poultry farms, you get about 15% more eggs per year if you use lights to give hens a constant day length year-round. Under old-fashioned farm conditions, which is what my hens see, the annual egg output is not affected much by artificial lights.
Artificial Lighting for Hens
Let me start by scoffing at the people who think that artificial lights are bad for hens. The fact is that lights are nowhere near so effective as people think they are. On modern poultry farms, you get about 15% more eggs per year if you use lights to give hens a constant day length year-round. Under old-fashioned farm conditions, which is what my hens see, the annual egg output is not affected much by artificial lights.
Then why use them? Because the hen's inclination is to lay eggs every day during the spring, and to take a long vacation in the fall and winter. This is wildly at odds with the purchasing patterns of my customers! Artificial lights will, if everything else is kept in proper trim, cause about the same number of eggs to be produced, but much more evenly through the year.
The downside of electric lights is that they demand better all-around management. Hens who are not laying very well don't have very high metabolic requirements, and if you let their feeders run empty once in a while or allow their water to freeze all day, the consequences don't show up in the egg yield. The hens aren't exerting themselves, and minor setbacks don't faze them.
But hens who are in full lay are easily tripped up by minor feed and water shortages. With lights, if you let the weather keep you indoors when you should be tending the flock, production will suddenly plummet. What happens is that the light stimulates the hens to lay, even if they don't have the nutritional resources to do so. They'll lay eggs for a while anyway, using up body reserves, and when these are gone, their egg-laying machinery shuts down entirely, and won't open shop again for a number of weeks. The hens won't become ill or particularly, as far as I can tell, but you can wave goodbye to the eggs you'd have had if you'd kept on top of things.
Thus, lights are for the serious egg producer (including serious breeders).
Lighting Theory
Oddly enough, light stimulation has nothing to do with the eyes. A certain amount of light filter's through the hen's feathers, skin, and skull, and stimulates the brain directly. Even blind chickens respond to light!
As you might expect, the red wavelengths penetrate better than the other colors, meaning that, for once, incandescent bulbs are nearly as good as compact fluorescents.
The amount of light required is quite small, and is in fact less than the amount necessary for the hens to be able to see well enough to get around. This fact is convenient, since if the lights are bright enough to let the hens move around, eat, drink, and find the perches, it's bright enough to stimulate laying. No light meter is necessary. It's also said that if you can read a newspaper, it's bright enough in the henhouse.
Having enough light for the hens to be active is useful! Especially in northern latitudes. Around Christmas, nighttime lasts about 15 1/2 hours at my farm. My chickens would prefer the time between dinner and breakfast to be shorter than this. Thus, if you have feed and water in your henhouses (which is usual), the lights should illuminate the feeders, the waterers, and the perches.
Laying is stimulated to some extent with any day length over ten hours, but 13-14 hours seem most effective for small farm flocks, and 16 hours is the consensus number for larger commercial operations (though they can get much fancier than a mere constant day length). In any case, once the lights are turned on, the day should not be allowed to get any shorter, or the hens are likely to go into a molt. Messing up for a day or two won't hurt, but that's about the limit.
Lighting Practice
Bulbs and Reflectors
But enough theory. The traditional advice for lighting is to use a clean 40-watt incandescent bulb with a good reflector for every 200 square feet of henhouse. If the bulb is dirty or you don't have a reflector, go up one size (60 watts). If the bulb is dirty and you don't have a reflector, go up two grades (100 watts -- but use two 60-watt bulbs instead).
If your hen house is smaller than 200 square feet, reduce the wattage proportionally. A 100 square foot house would only require 20 watts, so use a 25 watt bulb.
I have found that bulbs smaller than 40 watts are often bizarrely expensive, though some stores have them at reasonable prices. Long-life bulbs are dimmer and redder than ordinary ones, but should be just as good, since it's the red that does all the work.
I never have found a source of appropriate reflectors. Hen houses need a relatively flat reflector. So I simply don't use one.
Mount the lamp high enough that you don't bang your head on it, and so the hens rarely bonk into the fixture when flying around. The two ways to protect the lamp from breakage are to use a fixture with a guard and mount it securely, so it can be whacked without breaking, or to simply suspend a bare bulb from a rafter, so it will just swing when whacked.
Compact fluorescents are delicate and must be placed inside some kind of guard. You need to use unvented compact fluorescents, which I have never seen in local stores, and have to order by mail. FarmTek is a good source. On the whole I recommend incandescents bulbs. They are a rugged ninteenth-centurey technology that is well-suited to the hostile conditions inside a henhouse.
Timers
Since the hens are likely to molt if you forget to turn the lights on for several days in a row, you should use a timer. This year marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the electro-mechanical timer, and hen lights were one of the first uses it was put to. So we should follow the lead of the techno-pioneers during Teddy Roosevent's administration, and do likewise.
The simple plug-in timers are fine, though you can't adjust them very precisely. Wired-in timers are better, though not tons better.
Electric Eyes
Another convenience is the dusk-to-dawn light-sensing switch. You use this as follows:
First, you plug the timer into an outlet. Then, you wire the dusk-to-dawn switch into the output of the timer. Don't install them in reverse order, or the timer will only work when it's dark! Obviously, the light sensor in the dusk-to-dawn switch needs to be outdoors, where it can sense whether it's day or night.
Set the timer so to turn on at a convenient time, such as 6 AM, and off again about 14 hours later -- 8 PM. The timer will obediently turn on and off at the right times. Without the dusk-to-dawn switch, the lights will stay on all day, which wastes electricity. The dusk-to-dawn switch turns the lights off during the day and on when it gets dark. If ther's a power outage, you have to set the timer to the correct time again. Otherwise you don't have to touch the setup until spring. Lights are generally turned off around April 1.
There are alternatives to this method. Some people use lights only in the evening. They have to adjust the turn-off time about once a week to keep the day length at fourteen hours. Some people use lights just in the morning. I tried evening-only lights for several years, but got tired of adjusting the timers, and went to morning-and-evening lights.
I use portable pasture houses, which means that I have to use extension cords rather than permanent wiring. Permanent wiring is better. Basic wiring is not very hard, and there are a zillion books in the library telling you how to do it. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that poultry houses are a damp, corrosive environment that is hard on metal conduit and metal electrical boxes. They corrode very quickly. Plastic is used wherever possible in modern poultry housing. For similar reasons, brass-shell lamp sockets (which use cardboard insulators) should not be used. Plastic and porcelain sockets are fine.
When in doubt, have an electrician do the work.
If you must use extension cords, make sure they're oversized for the amount of current you're going to use. I have used cheap outdoor-rated extension cords with good results. If two extension cords have to be connected outdoors, I tie them together first and then use electrical tape that starts on one cord, completely covers both plug and socket, and ends on the other cord. This doesn't necessarily keep the connection dry, but it keeps it clean, which is the main thing.
If you need to use three-way taps, use the good ones -- the heavy-duty orange plastic ones that have solid brass contacts, not brass-plated steel. Tape those, too.
Another annoyance of poultry houses is that outlets and lamp sockets get filled with dust, roost mites, and other fauna. Taping any outlet that's not in use will help, as will filling any unused lamp socket with a burned-out or slightly unscrewed bulb.
Extension Cord Safety
If your houses are permanently sited, properly installed permanent wiring will be superior in every way. For portable housing, you're pretty much stuck with extension cords. (If you go with solar/battery powered lights, that's different, but I'm focusing on AC-powered lights today.)
The hens will start laying an hour or two after the lights come on, and if your nest boxes are not in the main henhouse, as mine aren't, this can cause a problem.
Some people say that, if the lights turn off suddenly, instead of dimming down, the hens may be caught on the floor instead of the perches. I have always found this to be more of a theoretical than a real problem. My hens all seem to be on the perches by the time the lights go out.
Lights have always paid for themselves, even for producers selling eggs at commodity prices. People like me, who sell eggs at premium prices, really can't afford to do without lights. Without lights, I have a desperate shortage of eggs during the fall and winter, and such a glut in the spring that I have to drop my prices dramatically, and am still in danger of having some go unsold.
The downside of electric lights is that they demand better all-around management. Hens who are not laying very well don't have very high metabolic requirements, and if you let their feeders run empty once in a while or allow their water to freeze all day, the consequences don't show up in the egg yield. The hens aren't exerting themselves, and minor setbacks don't faze them.
But hens who are in full lay are easily tripped up by minor feed and water shortages. With lights, if you let the weather keep you indoors when you should be tending the flock, production will suddenly plummet. What happens is that the light stimulates the hens to lay, even if they don't have the nutritional resources to do so. They'll lay eggs for a while anyway, using up body reserves, and when these are gone, their egg-laying machinery shuts down entirely, and won't open shop again for a number of weeks. The hens won't become ill or particularly, as far as I can tell, but you can wave goodbye to the eggs you'd have had if you'd kept on top of things.
Thus, lights are for the serious egg producer (including serious breeders).
Lighting Theory
Oddly enough, light stimulation has nothing to do with the eyes. A certain amount of light filter's through the hen's feathers, skin, and skull, and stimulates the brain directly. Even blind chickens respond to light!
As you might expect, the red wavelengths penetrate better than the other colors, meaning that, for once, incandescent bulbs are nearly as good as compact fluorescents.
The amount of light required is quite small, and is in fact less than the amount necessary for the hens to be able to see well enough to get around. This fact is convenient, since if the lights are bright enough to let the hens move around, eat, drink, and find the perches, it's bright enough to stimulate laying. No light meter is necessary. It's also said that if you can read a newspaper, it's bright enough in the henhouse.
Having enough light for the hens to be active is useful! Especially in northern latitudes. Around Christmas, nighttime lasts about 15 1/2 hours at my farm. My chickens would prefer the time between dinner and breakfast to be shorter than this. Thus, if you have feed and water in your henhouses (which is usual), the lights should illuminate the feeders, the waterers, and the perches.
Laying is stimulated to some extent with any day length over ten hours, but 13-14 hours seem most effective for small farm flocks, and 16 hours is the consensus number for larger commercial operations (though they can get much fancier than a mere constant day length). In any case, once the lights are turned on, the day should not be allowed to get any shorter, or the hens are likely to go into a molt. Messing up for a day or two won't hurt, but that's about the limit.
Lighting Practice
Bulbs and Reflectors
But enough theory. The traditional advice for lighting is to use a clean 40-watt incandescent bulb with a good reflector for every 200 square feet of henhouse. If the bulb is dirty or you don't have a reflector, go up one size (60 watts). If the bulb is dirty and you don't have a reflector, go up two grades (100 watts -- but use two 60-watt bulbs instead).
If your hen house is smaller than 200 square feet, reduce the wattage proportionally. A 100 square foot house would only require 20 watts, so use a 25 watt bulb.
I have found that bulbs smaller than 40 watts are often bizarrely expensive, though some stores have them at reasonable prices. Long-life bulbs are dimmer and redder than ordinary ones, but should be just as good, since it's the red that does all the work.
I never have found a source of appropriate reflectors. Hen houses need a relatively flat reflector. So I simply don't use one.
Mount the lamp high enough that you don't bang your head on it, and so the hens rarely bonk into the fixture when flying around. The two ways to protect the lamp from breakage are to use a fixture with a guard and mount it securely, so it can be whacked without breaking, or to simply suspend a bare bulb from a rafter, so it will just swing when whacked.
Compact fluorescents are delicate and must be placed inside some kind of guard. You need to use unvented compact fluorescents, which I have never seen in local stores, and have to order by mail. FarmTek is a good source. On the whole I recommend incandescents bulbs. They are a rugged ninteenth-centurey technology that is well-suited to the hostile conditions inside a henhouse.
Timers
Since the hens are likely to molt if you forget to turn the lights on for several days in a row, you should use a timer. This year marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the electro-mechanical timer, and hen lights were one of the first uses it was put to. So we should follow the lead of the techno-pioneers during Teddy Roosevent's administration, and do likewise.
The simple plug-in timers are fine, though you can't adjust them very precisely. Wired-in timers are better, though not tons better.
Electric Eyes
Another convenience is the dusk-to-dawn light-sensing switch. You use this as follows:
First, you plug the timer into an outlet. Then, you wire the dusk-to-dawn switch into the output of the timer. Don't install them in reverse order, or the timer will only work when it's dark! Obviously, the light sensor in the dusk-to-dawn switch needs to be outdoors, where it can sense whether it's day or night.
Set the timer so to turn on at a convenient time, such as 6 AM, and off again about 14 hours later -- 8 PM. The timer will obediently turn on and off at the right times. Without the dusk-to-dawn switch, the lights will stay on all day, which wastes electricity. The dusk-to-dawn switch turns the lights off during the day and on when it gets dark. If ther's a power outage, you have to set the timer to the correct time again. Otherwise you don't have to touch the setup until spring. Lights are generally turned off around April 1.
There are alternatives to this method. Some people use lights only in the evening. They have to adjust the turn-off time about once a week to keep the day length at fourteen hours. Some people use lights just in the morning. I tried evening-only lights for several years, but got tired of adjusting the timers, and went to morning-and-evening lights.
I use portable pasture houses, which means that I have to use extension cords rather than permanent wiring. Permanent wiring is better. Basic wiring is not very hard, and there are a zillion books in the library telling you how to do it. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that poultry houses are a damp, corrosive environment that is hard on metal conduit and metal electrical boxes. They corrode very quickly. Plastic is used wherever possible in modern poultry housing. For similar reasons, brass-shell lamp sockets (which use cardboard insulators) should not be used. Plastic and porcelain sockets are fine.
When in doubt, have an electrician do the work.
If you must use extension cords, make sure they're oversized for the amount of current you're going to use. I have used cheap outdoor-rated extension cords with good results. If two extension cords have to be connected outdoors, I tie them together first and then use electrical tape that starts on one cord, completely covers both plug and socket, and ends on the other cord. This doesn't necessarily keep the connection dry, but it keeps it clean, which is the main thing.
If you need to use three-way taps, use the good ones -- the heavy-duty orange plastic ones that have solid brass contacts, not brass-plated steel. Tape those, too.
Another annoyance of poultry houses is that outlets and lamp sockets get filled with dust, roost mites, and other fauna. Taping any outlet that's not in use will help, as will filling any unused lamp socket with a burned-out or slightly unscrewed bulb.
Extension Cord Safety
If your houses are permanently sited, properly installed permanent wiring will be superior in every way. For portable housing, you're pretty much stuck with extension cords. (If you go with solar/battery powered lights, that's different, but I'm focusing on AC-powered lights today.)
- Use a fuse or circuit breaker that's rated for a lower amperage than the extension cords. I used a 10-amp fuse for cords rated for 13 amps.
- Have a good ground connection to reduce shock hazard.
- Use plastic outlet boxes and fixtures, not metal, to reduce shock hazard.
- Don't use on-pasture extension cords during fire season. There's always a chance that something will short out enough to become very hot, but not enough to blow a fuse. You'd hate to start a fire that way.
The hens will start laying an hour or two after the lights come on, and if your nest boxes are not in the main henhouse, as mine aren't, this can cause a problem.
Some people say that, if the lights turn off suddenly, instead of dimming down, the hens may be caught on the floor instead of the perches. I have always found this to be more of a theoretical than a real problem. My hens all seem to be on the perches by the time the lights go out.
Lights have always paid for themselves, even for producers selling eggs at commodity prices. People like me, who sell eggs at premium prices, really can't afford to do without lights. Without lights, I have a desperate shortage of eggs during the fall and winter, and such a glut in the spring that I have to drop my prices dramatically, and am still in danger of having some go unsold.
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