lighting/heat lamp

[mamdoe]

Getting started on our coop and I just have a question about lighting.
We live in a cold weather state and ideally I would like my hens to lay all year round, so I know I need some lighting. My question is this if I put a heat lamp in do I leave it on 24 hours a day or just for the 12 hours. We are converting our old shed into the coop and we plan to put some insulation in it but would a heat lamp hung from the ceiling make a worthwhile difference or is just a regular old light bulb fine?

 

[Imp]

Quote:
The generally recommended guidelines are 14 hours of light a day for chickens to lay consistently year round. Most people add the light in the morning. For egg laying any source of light will work. I use a 13 watt CFL in the coop. The choice of supplementing light up to 14 hours or 24 hours is up to you. Some people are opposed to lighting 24 hours a day, stating it causes lots of problems. I light 24/7 and have never had any of those problems.
As far as heat that is also up to you. Heat is not much of a factor in egglaying. You say you live in a cold weather state. Cold weather is defined differently. Cold like Fairbanks Alaska , Seattle Washington or San Diego California?

In the winter there are lots of posts about heat. Many people say no heat chickens don't need it. There are also many posts about frostbite and chickens dying from the cold. I'm in Seattle, pretty mild, I heat the coop, usually it doesn't get below about 35*F. Most posts say that chickens are good down to about 0-10*F, but others say below that. There are many different ways to heat. Be careful using lamps as there are posts about them causing fires.
Can you tell my chickens are closer to being pets than agriculture.

Imp- Now the Big Screen, that's a must, in the coop for relieving chicken boredom.

 

[907chicken]

My plan is to put both in. Leave the regular white on and then when temps get around 0 i'll throw the heat lamp on too.

 

[mamdoe]

I live in Michigan, so the temps sometimes drop below 0.
Maybe I could use a regular light during the day and a red heat lamp at night.....

 

[RocketDad]

I ran an orange cord to the coop, and plugged in a power strip securely mounted to the wall. I ran the cord in through the window.

I put a regular 60 watt incandescent light on a mechanical timer (the kind with the dial and little red and green pegs) to stretch the day. The light was in a standard cheap clip-on reflector. I zip-tied the clip to a 2x2 once I had it where I liked it. Then I added another, and when one lamp burned out I replaced it with a random grow-light that I bought on clearance - about 100w, with a blue film on the front of the flood. Made for pleasant light inside.

I also had the 250w red lamp I brooded them with in it's original reflector, securely zip tied to a heavy metal hook in the ceiling. I turned it on by plugging it in to the power strip, when I wanted it. I left it on 24/7 during the worst of the cold snap this winter.

I fenced off one nest box with hardware cloth and put a cheap under-desk type space heater in it. The cheaper the better - expensive ones have circuits, the cheap ones just have a thermostat. If the breaker pops and you reset it, the thermostat still works. The expensive kind (I have 2 in my trailer/office) need to be reprogrammed and such after power loss. I turned the thermostat all the way down, and it tried to keep the coop about 48 degrees.

As soon as the weather changed from sub and near zero, I reduced the amount of heat and made the chickens go outside to play. I kept the red light on so that they could rewarm when they went in to lay, but the 1500w heater was the first load to be turned off.

The advantage of the heat lamp is that it doesn't warm the air, but the Infrared light warms the skin. Trying to keep a coop at a constant temp is an expensive battle, considering how much ventilation they need.

I insulated my coop with bead foam and foil-faced foam. I used rafter-vent panels under the roof, with soffit vents at both ends to keep the coop cool in the summer. I covered the insulation with white melamine-faced masonite for a bright and easily cleaned interior.

My chickens stayed very healthy over the winter, we got plenty of eggs, and my sleep was not interrupted by rocketmom freaking out about the hens being cold.

All good!

 

[CityChook]

Heat is a subjective topic around here. Everyone seems to do it a little differently and I say Awesome! Do what works for you. I'm in MN and we regularly have below 0 temperatures. This is what has worked for us for the last two winters:

Definitely insulate. Especially the ceiling. It will keep the coldest air out and the warm air in. With insulation, and even with heat though, comes the need for excellent ventilation. Do a search in the blue bar above - there is a ton of ventilation information on this forum. As far as the light bulb, there are plenty of folks here who just use regular white light bulbs and it works fine for them. Here's what I do:

I have a hardwired heat lamp (ceramic - no light, radiant heat) over the roost. I also bring out a secondary red lamp for when temps drop below 0. I have found that the red lamp tends to heat the air inside the coop much better than the ceramic, but it also seems to make the girls aggressive with each other and keep them up at night. Crabby maybe, like my kids with a late bedtime? Dunno, but I only use it temporarily in the winter when I HAVE to. Even still, my coop seems to average around 10-15F through the winter.

I have a third light set up with a 60 watt clear bulb on a Christmas light timer (like RocketDad with the pegs) to cycle in the morning and again in the early evening for extended light for egg laying. It's not on during the day. My chickens seem to lay better in the winter than they do in the summer. Bored maybe?

Hope this helps.