How much light for winter laying?

[BWKatz]

My only experience w/battery xma lites was a 10 lite set for a door wreath that would be on 5-6 hr a night . A set of batteries lasted at least 2mo. I use elcectric xmas lites in my coop and its enough lite for the chickens to go in at nite and wakes them up at six in the morn. There are batteries at Lowes that u can plug into , u just need to ask someone.

 

[jrudolph305]

You can also check into using a car battery, inverter and maybe a 40 watt bulb for light. Would have to charge the battery periodically--don't know how long a charge would last to light a 40 watt bulb. You can also add a timer (that would reduce battery life) or manually turn it off and on depending on your schedule.

 

[Clay Valley Farmer]

I was just going to post about using a car battery. I have this set up for my hunt camp 2 large car batteries from a deisel and a 1000W inverter.

One thing though is you don't need to go to an inverter, just run straight from the battery to 12 volt LED bulb sets. They are easy to get automotive or on line. Likely get a couple months before needing a recharge. Down the road you can always add a solar pannel and charge controler with a light timer but it would likely cost a couple hundred bucks to get set up.

I have power to the coup but am using a small light with about 20 LEDs in it for two 4x5 pens. Turning it on 4:30am, its not a lot of light but so far layers are keeping up with an egg a day 9 days out of 10. when it gets cold I may switch to a regular bulb just to take the chill off a bit. Pretty common to get into the -20s to -30s here by January.

 

[Ariel301]

Ooh car battery! Good thought! My husband has some electrician training, he could probably wire that up easily.