red heat light at night effecting egg laying habits?

[schmije]

We run a red heat lamp on the waterer all night long. The girls don't seem to notice it. The egg production had begun to slow down as the days got shorter, before we started using the light. With the light, they're back to laying like they did over the summer. We average 7-8 eggs per day from 10 hens.

 

[Davidian]

I am in the proces of revamping our coop (we just moved here) and starting up a small flock of 8. We've been cold for the last 2 days here in Spokane and I worry about them getting too cold. last night it hit -16 at our house. I have one light inside on a timer for light and then 2 red heat lamps on all the time right now... is that too much light? Will the red lamps affect them? I was told they won't at night. I am building some nesting boxes as the coop we have here only had a 5 foot long roost pole then a nesting "Shelf" above it... They appear not to like the shelf... I'll be putting nesting boxes on that shelf... I'll try to get pics tomorrow.

New to BYC

 

[Mortimer]

I had a white heat lamp on for 24 hrs/day for a week or so when it first started getting cold. It didn't affect the quantity of eggs but it affected the timing quite a bit. Before the light mine would always lay in the mid-morning, right after lunch I would collect eggs and that'd be it for the day (3-4/day).

After a day or two of the white heat lamp being on, when I let them out in the morning (8am or so) there would always be 3 eggs ready for me to take. They started laying at night! After a few days I figured I musta messed up their little internal clocks so I bought a $5 mechanical timer and set it to come on at 6:30am and off at 8:30am, and after a few days they got back on schedule.

At the same time I hooked up a red heat lamp to stay on 24/7, so I have the red lamp on all the time and the white lamp on a timer for 14hrs/day. The red lamp hasn't affected anything as far as egg-laying goes, still the same quantity about the same time every day.

Tonight is our first SUPER cold night, supposed to get down to 5 and the wind is HOWLING.