Augmenting Daylight with LED

[Oxfordmom]

It's time to determine how to extend the lighting conditions for our chickens. We'll not get into the debate about whether or not we should. We are.

Gail Damerow suggests that if you must use fluorescent fixtures that you use warm-wavelength lights (orange - reddish light) as opposed to cool-wavelength lights which don't stimulate the reproductive cycle.

Hubby's question is whether or not LED's would work?

Thanks in advance!

ps ~ we got our first egg from our 25 week RIR, Penny, on Sunday! Monday her Leghorn compatriot, Lucy (19 weeks), decided to join in and we're now getting two eggs a day!

Only 12 more to go...

 

[moetrout]

Wikipedia has this to say about it:

A light-emitting diode (LED) (pronounced /ˌɛl iː ˈdiː/[1]) is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices, and are increasingly used for lighting. Introduced as a practical electronic component in 1962,[2] early LEDs emitted low-intensity red light, but modern versions are available across the visible, ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, with very high brightness.

I take this to mean that it really depends on what kind of LED it is. In my opinion you would only know if you contacted the manufacturer of the particular light you buy and ask them.

 

[Ohhhdear]

My DH has been on a real energy conservation kick in the past 2 years. We've experimented with CFL bulbs and gone mostly to LEDs throughout the house. One of the experiments in my kitchen was daylight spectrum LED strip fixtures, but most didn't produce enough actual light overhead to illuminate my kitchen workspace. So he has a couple LED strips that I'm going to hang in the coop. They only take 10 watts of power and produce the light of a 75 watt bulb. No heat, though. Just 14+ hours of light on a timer.

We're combining the LED strips hung overhead from the inner roof peak of the coop with a Dampp-Chase humidity control system 25 watt heating rod slid into a larger PVC tube, on the floor of the coop. These are available from any piano tuner/technician, or from the Dampp-Chaser company in North Carolina. We used to be full time piano tuners, so we had a couple of the heating rods still in stock. They're insulated and UL listed. We used them in our galvanized stock tank for brooding the chicks when we got them in March.

Michigan winters are humid and cold and hang around until the end of April. I want my chickens to be able to metabolize their feed without using all their energy to just stay warm.

 

[TrystInn]

We use LEDs to keep our chickens and ducks laying and they work great.

My favorites are an LED nightlight with sensor inside the coop and a flexible LED cord holiday decorating-type for outdoors. The cost is negligible and the lights don't burn out or create heat.