Light for Coop?

[Jokray90]

Hi there

We love in Indiana and have a flock of 11. Their ages range from a few months to 3 years. All are of laying age.

The eggs are slowing down significantly (I think only one is still laying right now). I attribute that to the light. My question is: if we get a light on them, will the eggs continue? Or is heat required...?

And I am talking about JUST a light. My husband doesn't want any heat due to potential fire hazard and it potentially going out and sending them into shock.

Any advice appreciated. If we only need a light, please let me know what you use! Bonus if you have a link!

 

[Albert the Saxony]

Hi, I have always setup an led light on a timer. I set the timer to come on a couple hours before dark and to go off around 10:00pm each night. There was a time years ago, when the light didn’t turn off the chickens ended up laying twice as many eggs that night!

in short giving them a light during these fall/winter days should definitely help. Best wiishes with your flock!

 

[Little Chickadee]

We purchased a stick up light from walmart, but not for eggs. Our hens laid happily through our Michigan winter last year. I found that when their egg count dropped, it would increase if I supplemented protein for a few days. Scrambled eggs, shredded meat, meslworms.. they were happy and so were we!

I dont use lights to alter their laying cycle though. I simply use it for doing a head count before locking them up at night. Or getting a few in that like to perch late in our run.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Good for your husband. You don't say where you are so I don't know what kinds of temperatures you will be seeing or how short the days might get. Chickens do not need heat to lay, but where it comes into play the colder they are the more energy they need from their food to keep themselves warm. In the overall scheme of things that's a pretty minor part of egg laying but it can effect how often they lay. It probably affects the egg size more than frequency of lay, but it can have an effect.

Light is a very important part of laying in different ways. One of their triggers in when to release a yolk to start that internal egg making process is light. They release the yolk so the egg will be laid during the day, not at night when they are on the roost. With shorter days they skip laying more often.

To lay an egg a chicken has to eat a certain amount of nutrients. The shorter the day the less time they have to eat and digest enough nutrients for that egg. This will affect the size of the eggs more than the frequency of lay, but it's still a factor.

A really big factor is the molt. The typical cycle for chickens before we domesticated them was they would lay eggs and hatch chicks in the good weather months. In the fall when food got scarcer they'd shed their worn out feathers and replace them. They'd stop laying and use the nutrients that would go to egg laying to grow those feathers. Then they would wait until the longer days of spring when food was more available to start laying eggs and hatching chicks.

When we domesticated them we messed that system up some. The basic instincts are still there but through selective breeding we've made some of them better egg layers. Instead of waiting until the longer days of spring to start laying many of them will start laying again as soon they finish the molt. Some pullets will skip the molt their first fall/winter and lay straight through even without supplemental lights. "Some" pullets does not mean "every" pullet, that's often misread on here. There are always exceptions but the vast majority of mature hens will molt and stop laying when days get shorter.

You will read that chickens need 14 or 16 hours of light to lay eggs. That's nonsense but it is often repeated on here. The commercial operations that tightly control how they feed them and that carefully manage lights have determined that kind of schedule is most efficient at giving them lots of good sized eggs for the market. I don't manage my chickens the same way the commercial operations do. The frequency of lay drops a bit for reasons I mentioned above but mine usually lay pretty well with 10 hours of natural light and no artificial light when they are not molting.

The key factor that controls if they molt or continue laying is the days getting shorter. It's not a set number of hours, it's the hours getting shorter. For the hens that still wait for spring to start laying it's the days getting longer that triggers that, not a set number of hours of light.

At a certain point, different for each hen, a hen gets tired of laying. Her body needs to refresh to rejuvenate itself. They do that by molting. Their productivity drops and egg quality can suffer. With most hens that's over a year of continuing to lay. With the commercial operations, their tight profit margins, and their specially bred egg laying hens that's typically around 13 months but most of our hens can go a few months longer. They may go into a partial or even full blown molt on their own, even in what should be a good laying time of the year.

The trigger for molting is not heat and it is not the length of the days, it's the days getting shorter. If you stop the days from getting shorter you can keep them from molting. But it's not that simple. The days start getting shorter after we pass the summer solstice. We've already passed the fall equinox. They don't molt as soon as the days get shorter and they don't all start to molt on exactly the same day. When to stop the days getting shorter is sort of a guess. Different people use different times with different results. Since your production has dropped or pretty much stopped, are you seeing a lot of feathers flying around? Your molt has probably already started. When a hen stops laying her comb often turns pale instead of bright red. That might be a clue for you also.

When a hen stops laying for the molt or when she goes broody she makes some changes to her internal plumbing. Certain parts dry up. Her ova stops growing into sizes to make a yolk. She has to reverse these changes before she can start to lay again. This does not happen overnight, it may take a few weeks. She still has to complete the molt or break from being broody to start these changes.

Since one big trigger to start the molt is that the days get shorter, once you start extending the length of light you can cause a molt by stopping extending the lights in a way that the days seem to get shorter to the hen. And days get longer and shorter at sunset and sunrise. How to balance all that might take some thought.

Lots of people supplement lights as you are considering doing. It can be very effective but there are some limitations and consequences. Maybe this will help you decide a good way to go for you. Good luck!

 

[aart]

I use lights, just a 60W bulb over roost area, comes on early in the morning.
Only crank them up in mid December so the old girls can finish molting.
Here's a pretty good article on supplemental lighting.