Coop lighting in winter

[Farias1124]

What kind of light does everyone use to keep their girls laying during winter? We don't have terribly cold winters here in western Washington so I don't think I need one for heat. Just looking for something to keep my egg production going. Thanks everyone.

Brian

 

[aart]

I used a 40 watt white incandescent last year and am using a CFL this year, which uses about half the wattage and gives twice the light. It comes up to max light slowly which I kind of like...we'll see if it handles the freeing temps.
Comes on early morning (set for 14 hours of 'day') and goes off about 9am, they go to roost with the natural sunset.

Here's a pretty good article on supplemental lighting.

 

[Kelsie2290]

Nice article on winter lighting http://www.hort.purdue.edu/tristate_organic/poultry_2007/Light Management.pdf you need to use a "warm" bulb http://web2.uconn.edu/poultry/NE-127/NewFiles/light.html This one goes into the gory technical aspects of lighting. Basically you just want a "warm" (usually incandescent) type light bulb, not one of the ones that is labeled as "cool". If you look at the bulb box it should say what it is on the back of the box, usually there is a section under "lighting Facts per bulb" called something like "Light Appearance" with a number or graph like 2700K...the wattage you'll need depends on how big your coop is and where the light is etc.

 

[Farias1124]

My coop is 5x5. If your looking at the coop the roost bars are on the east wall, laying boxes on the north, chicken door on the west and man door on the south. Where should the light be? What wattage should I use? Thanks for the info. I'll have to read up on those articles.

 

[aart]

My coop is a hardware cloth 'box' inside an wooden shed, so I just sit the metal lamp shade(typical heat lamp shade) on top of the mesh 'ceiling' about 8 feet off the floor. 40-60 watts or equivalent should be plenty...someone cited, 'you should be able to read a newspaper in there'.

Put it where it won't be knocked into and where it lights up the floor area around the water and feed so they can see well to eat and drink on those early mornings when you're still asleep.

 

[RonP]

I posted this on another query, this is how I do it, works extremely well, hope it helps:

There are a lot of opinions on supplementing light to keep the chickens laying during time period where there is less than 12-14 hours of available daylight.

My coop gets 16 hours of light 351 days per year.

I turn lights off for 14 days to have birds go into a controlled moult late September .

Having had to install electricity for the thermostatically controlled water heater, I took advantage and installed a lighting system.

My system has two timers. The first is set to turn the lights on at 5:30am, off at 9pm.

Power goes on, passes through a photocell, then to a 300 lumen LED bulb, 4.8 watts, in the coop, and 2 4.8 watt LEDs for the outside run.

I light the run because I found the birds huddled outside the coop door in the dark one 5:30am morning...
They have access to the run 24/7, as it is as secure as the coop.

The lights are on only when it is dark enough outside to be necessary.
The time on very closely mimics my Summer Solstice in NJ.

The second timer is set to go on at 8:30pm, off at 9:30pm, a diffused 200 lumen LED 4 watt bulb.
This low light allows the birds to settle in before all lights out and 8 hours of darkness.

This system costs less than $5 per year to operate..