coop interior lighting

[WthrLady]

Red light or white?

To extend our laying season, I want to add a light, on a timer inside the coop.

She this be white or anti peck red?

And how many watts? 15/25 or is a night light bulb plenty?

 

[aart]

White incandescent light, 40-60 watts should be enough.

Good article on supplemental light.

 

[ECBW]

CFL works great, brightness of 60 watt at 11watt power!!!! Use enough bulbs so it is bright to you. My coop only requires 1 bulb. Some may say that you MUST have certain lumen, candela etc.

Also CFL does not get hot... no fire risk.

Red is for heating, white is for waking them. Use timer to add dawn lighting. Control the supplemental light amount so you can control the yield.

 

[aart]

Tube fluorescent lighting has a flicker rate the bothers chickens........not sure if the higher flicker rate of the CFL's would bother them or not.

 

[CrazyTalk]

Tube fluorescent lighting has a flicker rate the bothers chickens........not sure if the higher flicker rate of the CFL's would bother them or not.

Tubes on electronic ballasts flicker at the same rate as CFLs... so unless you've got really crappy ballasts, this isn't an issue (if its even true, I've never seen any research stating tubes bother chickens)

 

[WthrLady]

Well they bother the heck out of me! Plus cfls don't last in our severe cold outside here.

 

[aart]

Quote: Well, I meant the older ballasts.
Flicker rate on flourescents stated in this article "The human brain can detect the 60 cycles per second such older bulbs need to refresh themselves to keep putting out light.
However, modern, electronically ballasted CFLs refresh themselves at between 10,000 and 40,000 cycles per second, rates too fast for the human eye or brain to detect"
Look near the bottom of this article "Due to the unique vision of chickens, fluorescent lights are highly inadvisable. "
Avian vets article on chicken vision.

Well they bother the heck out of me! Plus cfls don't last in our severe cold outside here.

The old tubes bother me too, the CFL's do not.....and I was also wondering about the CFL's in the frigid cold weather too...have you tried them WthrLdy, where are you located?

 

[WthrLady]

The first cfls were awful and some of the new ones i can still see flicker, but then i have an issue with lights/flash and sensitivities anyway. The new bulbs are super!