Does artificial lighting affect molting? Will they not molt if they still get the 14 avg. hours of light a day? We are giving them the extra light and our 25 girls haven't shown any signs of molting. I keep hearing of others molting. We might not give them the extra light but for them being so stupid. Now we have to do a headcount (not always reliable, like counting drops of quicksilver) and search the chicken yard for any stragglers before we lock them up, then they do their jostling around and eat a bit, drink some water and just plain relax before they go to bed. No point of locking them up in the dark. Its been raining so much we don't put feed outside right now so they need their evening snack. Listen to me....not only an old cat lady, now I'm an old chicken lady. -Ilene
We have a light on a timer that will come on at 5am to give the girls plenty of light... my neighbor said make sure you are having the light go on in the AM and not at night as yes, you will disturb their natural flow of getting in the coop and heading to roost for the night, if a light is on in the PM.. makes sense.. as chickens cannot see in the dark.. good luck..
First of all I give light at both ends of the day and the chickens don't have a problem getting on their roosts after dark--they're usually there by the time the lights go off anyway. As far as light and moult is concerned: While I'm no expert on this, I have a feeling that moulting is more a case of age than light/time of year. Most chickens will moult at the end of their first year of laying which, for the vast majority since they are spring chicks, is the fall. At least that's what seems to happen here. The few times I've hatched chicks in late summer--under a broody--those chicks haven't gone into production until spring and moulted in the spring--my others all go into moult around October which is their first POL.
I'm not sure of the molting issue, but have noticed that when I put in a light(on a timer) that the egg production has been steady. It was starting to slow with the time change.
