Do you use artificial lighting during the winter?

[woodmort]

Quote:
Very true--commercial operations run lights 24/7. Keeping one's birds on a constant 12-14 hrs of light year around hardly qualifies as cruelty and forced laying. 10 - 12 hours of rest time should be sufficient--in fact, I've noticed my birds even nap during the afternoon most every day regardless of the amount of light.

I don't believe anyone said anything about 'cruelty'.
I simply meant adding light isn't as natural as I'd like my chicken's life to be.

It was kind of implied with the references to puppy mills and forced molt.
As far as "natural" what is more "natural" the 12 yrs of daylight in, say, Florida year round or the varying 16 to 8 hrs that we get here? Or the 24 to zero in Alaska?
The point is, if you keep your chickens on a constant light cycle there is not going to be a problem and you are not a bad chicken keeper. Frankly--and I know I'm going to catch it for saying this--every time this kind of thread appears there are a few who do not use lights that seem to imply those who do are doing something bad to their birds. In truth, if someone is wants to add longer light periods to their chicken coop, especially for egg production, no bad things are going to happen unless the lights/wiring is so bad that it burns the place down.

 

[chicmom]

I light my coop from 6am to 8pm at this time of year. I'm getting a nice output of eggs every day! I love it!

 

[tammyd57]

Quote:
I don't believe anyone said anything about 'cruelty'.
I simply meant adding light isn't as natural as I'd like my chicken's life to be.

It was kind of implied with the references to puppy mills and forced molt.
As far as "natural" what is more "natural" the 12 yrs of daylight in, say, Florida year round or the varying 16 to 8 hrs that we get here? Or the 24 to zero in Alaska?
The point is, if you keep your chickens on a constant light cycle there is not going to be a problem and you are not a bad chicken keeper. Frankly--and I know I'm going to catch it for saying this--every time this kind of thread appears there are a few who do not use lights that seem to imply those who do are doing something bad to their birds. In truth, if someone is wants to add longer light periods to their chicken coop, especially for egg production, no bad things are going to happen unless the lights/wiring is so bad that it burns the place down.

Sheesh~!I simply stated my beliefs for MY chickens. I didn't say, imply or infer that anyone who believes differently is cruel, wrong, misinformed or anything! If someone else has ruffled your feathers on this topic, please don't take it out on me.
I don't live in Florida or Alaska, I live in California and so do my chickens, so the hours of daylight they get here is natural for them.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

Quote:
Very true--commercial operations run lights 24/7.

I don't know where you all get your information. I've never heard of any commercial operation keeping the lights on 24/7, nor ever seen any recommendations for doing so. I'm not sure what the point of that would be.

General recommendations are for 16 hours of light per day for layer houses with no light leakage. For houses with light leakage or windows (e.g., organic production) the general recommendation is to extend the lighting to match the longest day of the year in that area, not to exceed 18 hours.

Here, we stimulate our flocks to lay by gradually increasing the day length from about 12 hours to 16:45 hours of light, lighting our barn from 03:45 AM to 08:30 PM which matches the longest day of the year for our southwest Wisconsin location. Since forced molting is such a hot topic, our organic co-op doesn't allow it and the producers in our co-op replace their flocks once a year allowing a two week period for clean out which also provides a resting period for the barn and pastures that help to break any parasitic cycles.

 

[woodmort]

Mac, I'm only familiar with what was done at the two places I had contact with circa 1960's they left their lights on 24/7, burned their birds out in 2 years and sold them off to Campbell for soup.

 

[gjfarm]

Any opinions on what type light is best - wattage? Incandescent or fluorescent bulbs ? Was thinking of using CFL to save on electricity.

 

[woodmort]

Quote:
20 w florescent GE Bright Stick--comes with it's own fixture and switch, just stick it up, pug it into a timer and turn it on. I think, if I didn't have this and had a regular fixture I'd go with a LED--Lowe's has a 40w on sale around here for about $25. No worries about breakage or excess heat/fire and low cost operation, I'd worry about CFL's just for the breakage factor plus, as I understand it, they don't work too well in the cold.

 

[kelidei]

last year I added artificial light... it did help with egg production... BUT because I live in far northern illinois it gets brutally cold some days so my chickens would spend a lot more time inside... I would suppose that having all those light hours and nothing to do they began the dreaded feather picking... it was a pain to stop.... finally they all received pinless peepers.... no artificial light this year... I do have radiant heat panels in all three coops... they don't really raise the ambient temp too much but I hang them over the roosts and they can at least warm up their toes and combs... I still have to have bird bath heaters in the five gallon nipple drinkers. Tthe only light they have are a couple LED night lights in each coop... they have a sensor so they go on and off as needed... mainly it is so I don't break my neck if I have to go in there when it is dark outside...