Helping Chickens lay in Winter

[aart]

I think it works. They come out of the coop 5-15 minutes after the lights turn on. That picture is from last year. They started laying about 3 weeks after we started lighting last year. We turned the lights on about two weeks ago. We'll see. And of course I will report out findings. Not that this is very scientific.

Ahh...remember now they can come out.

 

[ChloeSilkie08]

Our Christmas lights in the run are to encourage the girls to start laying again. They provide no heat. And none is required. And It looks nice when we wake predawn.

You are the only person I have seen who has Christmas lights on their run.

 

[humblehillsfarm]

You are the only person I have seen who has Christmas lights on their run.

Then you don't follow a lot of crazy chicken people on Instagram!

 

[jreardon1918]

You are the only person I have seen who has Christmas lights on their run.

They are old, repurposed lights. And as I said, it is cool to look out in the morning and see the girls up before the sun, enjoying the Christmas season.

 

[ChloeSilkie08]

They are old, repurposed lights. And as I said, it is cool to look out in the morning and see the girls up before the sun, enjoying the Christmas season.

I let my chickens out ever since we had 4 raccoons get in the run. Thankfully I had them closed up in the coop where the coons couldn't get to them.

 

[jreardon1918]

I think it works. They come out of the coop 5-15 minutes after the lights turn on. That picture is from last year. They started laying about 3 weeks after we started lighting last year. We turned the lights on about two weeks ago. We'll see. And of course I will report out findings. Not that this is very scientific.

An update on the lights. We turned them on about a month ago. Started at 5am. Every day they come on 5 minutes earlier. When we get to the solstice we will let the increasing daylight take over. This morning one of our older ladies laid an egg. First egg from one of the older girls since September 30. Hopefully all the hens and the 3 new girls (27 weeks) will begin laying soon.

 

[My2butterflies]

I have a light on a timer in the coop. It serves two purposes; It lights the coop up as it gets dark out so they can feel secure going inside, and they have kept laying.
My light is just a normal bulb in a heat lamp. It’s bright enough to light the coop, but not crazy bright. If that makes sense. Haha.

 

[TSP]

Mine went through a fairly hard molt this fall. We hadn’t gotten an egg since September. The flock is 14 hens/pullets with 9 being last years hatch and 5 this springs hatch. I found a couple of LED aquarium lights locally and put them up on the ceiling of my coop on a timer two weeks ago today. So far this week, we’ve gotten six eggs, all but one of them little pullet eggs, but it was surprising how quickly they started laying once they had some light. The aquarium lights are nice as they are low profile, 12v (little wall wart transformers plugged into timer) and use almost no electricity, something like 8 watts per fixture. They are full spectrum with mostly white bulbs but also some blues and reds. I live in far northern Wisconsin so sunrise today was around 0730 and sunset will be just after 1600 and will only get shorter for the next three weeks. I do have supplemental heat as it gets really cold here (-40* Fahrenheit is not uncommon) but the heat plate is on a thermostatic plug and only turns on below freezing. These are all Bielefelder birds, so they are pretty cold hardy and are usually outside during daylight regardless of how cold it is.