Colour, does it influence the laying ability of chickens?

[Bantimna]

In some species of avians the colour [green is preferred in most cases] of the nest boxes and the interior of the night house can greatly influence broodiness and productivity. Is it the same with chickens? Will a colour combo influence the productivity of the pullets/hens?

I'm busy considering this as, we are moving in June 2011 to a new spot in South Africa, that means coop construction! So to prepare everything I am busy sniffing out all possibilities that go with constructing a coop.

Thanks!
Bantimna

 

[speckledhen]

Hi, Sibone, no idea. I hope the crazy colors I painted the interior of the new bantam coop will keep them pumping them out, but could just scare them, LOL. Seafoam green floor and one wall, other three walls violet and nestboxes a vibrant gold.

Hope you get moved okay and can finally get a coop built!

 

[ninabeast]

Great question! I'm about a week away from painting our new coop, so I will be watching this thread for answers...

 

[Souffle]

Great question. I've yet to paint our coop too. Good luck on your move. Personally, I hope the color is yellow.

 

[ninabeast]

Souffle, we're painting our coop white with yellow/orange trim (get it?)...so I hope it's yellow too!

 

[patandchickens]

I do not know of any studies that study the effect on *broodiness*, since that is something undesirable in commercial hens and has been virtually-100% bred out of them, and of course there are next to no research studies done on backyard type flocks as opposed to "two hundred thousand leghorns in a warehouse building".

Given how much the egg industry studies how to wring every last egg out of the aforementioned leghorns and other commercial lines, though, I think it is safe to say that if green made them lay better, the insides of layer barns would all be green, whcih they aren't

For a backyard situation, it is often advantageous to have a very light-painted coop inside because most people are trying to get their chickens to lay as close to year-round as possible, and the dimmer it is in there, the shorter the chickens' bodies perceive daylength to be. Thus with a white-inside coop you can squeeze a couple extra weeks of "sufficient light to lay" out of each year; or if you are adding artificial lighting anyhow, you can use a lower wattage bulb which is safer.

My (wild and basically not-founded-on-any-shred-of-data) guess would be that chickens would be a lot less sensitive to environment color, even for broodiness, than typical birds are, because chickens have been bred to be sooooo far from their wild state. That said, I really dunno and it may be that nobody else does either, you could try it and see

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Bantimna]

Quote:
Thank you!

 

[KlaHaYa Gardens]

Quote:
Bantimna,

I'm interested to know more about which species and what their colour preferences are. Would you kindly share more?


PS, I used to live on your continent, but not so far south. Would love to visit South Africa, though.

 

[Bantimna]

Quote:
Bantimna,

I'm interested to know more about which species and what their colour preferences are. Would you kindly share more?


PS, I used to live on your continent, but not so far south. Would love to visit South Africa, though.

Yep, I'd be happy to share....

Where in my dear continent? Zambia, Zim, Mozambique?

 

[Bantimna]

KlaHaYa Gardens, here is some useful information regarding colours....

Original article can be found here
Received my newest issue of BirdScope (Summer 2009) from Cornell's Lab of Ornithology. The following article was written by Elizabeth, Grade 6, Dayspring Christian Academy, as part of Cornell Lab's BirdSleuth curriculum (www.birdsleuth.org). I thought those who feed the outside birdies would be intereted in her experiment...

"I did my experiment to find out if birds would eat more seed from a particular colored bird feeder. In my experiment, I used five different colored bird feeders loaded with the same kind of seed, all set next to each in a carefully selected location. Bird color vision is actually better than human vidion. Since most fruits I saw on bushes in my neighborhood in winter are blue, I hypothesized the birds would eat seed from the blue-colored bird feeder.

All bird feeders were identical, spray-painted with two coats for full-color brightness. Seed was set out at the same time for each. The experiment ran from December 1, 2007, to January 18, 2008. I did five seven-day test runs. The birds ate much more seed from the green and yellow feeders, with green being the feeder that birds ate the most seeds from. Of all the seed eaten during the experiment (463.2g), the birds ate 40.46% of the seed from the green feeder and 36.42% from the yellow feeder. The red feeder ranked in the middle. This seems opposite of all the things I read about red feeders and attracting birds. The birds ate the least amount from the blue (7.05%) and white (4.9%) feeders.

My hypothesis was proven wrong. Birds ate seed the least from blue and white feeders and the most from the green and yellow feeders. I think birds may have eaten more seed from the green feeders because green is the natural color of bushes. I cannot understand why yellow feeder did so well. Maybe the color yellow on the bird feeder matches the color of grasses that birds eat seeds from."


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Original article can be found here


We obtained bird observations for all lamp types and weather conditions on different nights during the observation period. Light configurations (two types were used each night) were changed regularly in order to prevent possible order effects. The bird responses in all situations, including sample sizes, are given in Table 3.

Bird responses to the three different white-light conditions were statistically indistinguishable (Pearson χ2 = 4.945, df = 2, P = 0.084) and thus all white-light data, irrespective of intensity, were totalled for further analysis. Under white-light conditions, the birds were significantly disturbed and attracted to the light source. The same is true for the red-light condition. In blue-light conditions, birds generally followed a seasonally appropriate migratory direction. In green light, birds were less well oriented than in blue light, but significantly less disturbed or attracted than in red and white light (Fig. 5). The effects of disturbance and attraction were strongest on overcast nights, regardless of lamp configuration, indicating primary use of celestial cues for migratory orientation.

We started the log-linear analysis with the fully saturated model including reaction (REACT), light conditions (COLOR), overcast conditions (CLOUD), and moonlight conditions (MOON), i.e., the generating class of this model is REACT*COLOR*CLOUD*MOON. Table 4 shows the significance of all two-way and three-way interactions in this model involving the variable REACT, i.e., a reaction by the birds. There were highly significant two-way interactions between COLOR and REACT, and between CLOUD and REACT. The three-way interaction MOON*CLOUD*REACT bordered significance. We obtained the best-fitting hierarchical log-linear model (χ2 = 9.867, df = 11, P = 0.542) using backward elimination of terms, i.e., non-significant terms (P > 0.05) were dropped, starting with the least significant term. Comparing the best-fitting model with the model that excluded the interaction between COLOR and REACT indicated that birds responded differently to different light conditions (partial χ2 = 153.68, df = 3, P < 0.0001). Comparing the best-fitting model with the model that excluded the interaction between CLOUD and REACT indicated that birds were also affected by overcast conditions (partial χ2 = 13.71, df = 1, P < 0.001). We found no effect of moonlight.

Logistic regression indicated that the probability that birds reacted to the light significantly increased with wave length of the light (B = 0.013, Wald = 28.0, df = 1, P < 0.001) and cloud cover (B = 0.014, Wald = 4.8, df = 1, P = 0.029). Thus, birds were more likely to respond to the light when it had a long wave length, i.e., when it was red, and when cloud cover was high, i.e., on overcast nights.