Hi, this is Rustom Meyer (the author of the article at the beginning of this thread). Firstly, I should say sorry; I didn't realize this article was going to be posted in thread form, and that there would be comments. Mind you, I'm not at all unhappy about that, I just didn't check back until now. So, I know a lot of people has pointed questions/comments at me and I did not respond in any way. I was not ignoring you, I just wasn't around. I will try to address some of the points that have been raised below:
@SoManyHats , what I was trying to get across was that reduced winter laying in chickens is not a natural cycle, any more than a coop is their natural habitat. I scoured the literature looking for any evidence that some supplemental lighting in chickens effects their health, reduces lifespan, or reduces future laying, and I could not find anything (there is an edge case about high-intensity light causing cannibalistic behaviour, which I didn't think was worth mentioning in the article, but see my next response below). As they say, 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence', but by the same token, maybe stopping laying is bad for them? Either way, I suspect the effect is slight; if there were interesting trends there, I think one of the ag schools would have explored it in the research by now (they've been examining the details of raising chickens in scientific papers for nearly 100 years now). All that being said, different breeds of chickens can react to environmental stimuli differently, in some cases radically differently (for example, temperature tolerance). So, if you have observed negative effects of supplemental lighting in your own chickens, then obviously do what you think is best for them! As an aside, if that is the case, what breed(s) do you raise?
@At Barred Up, could you drop a link to the thing about ovarian cancer? Some LED lightbulbs do have a flicker, which may be imperceptible or not to humans (and can sometimes cause headaches). The reason for this is that the LEDs are being controlled through something called pulse-width-modulation. Essentially, the LEDs are being turned on and off again hundreds of times a second. It's a kind of kludgey way to do things, and we use ballest resistors instead, which results in steady light.
@Lady of McCamley , Thanks for the feedback. One of the main purposes of the article was to get people interested in my solar lights, certainly. Another was to answer the common questions that people kept emailing me about, including why one might want coop lighting in the first place. One of the other big reasons for the article was the alarm that I felt when I found out how many people were running extension cords as permenant wiring! Hopefuly, I have explained throughly enough why that is a bad idea to prevent some accidents in the future.
I tried to be pretty upfront about the purpose of the article, and not pretend that there was no commercial interest there. Sorry if you felt otherwise. If it makes you feel any better, the money I paid to put it up will help pay for server time etc. for the forum.
I agree 100% that natural is not the same as healthy; that is the point I was trying to get across. I have had some people try to tell me that adding artificial lighting is unnatural and therefore bad. Eating with forks is unnatural, but it also has a lower disease risk than eating with your hands.
Before writing this article, I tried to find a consensus on the best procedure for using supplementmental lighting. I went back to a lot of sources I have used in the past, co-operative extensions, peer-reviewed papers, etc. The recommendations were not uniform, and were in fact sometimes at odds. I concluded that the various methodologies must all be about the same in effect or one would have dominated by now, so rather than overwhelm the readers with a variety of contradictory recommendations, I picked one that was simple and from a reputable source.
I took a look at the cooperative extension document you cited (and thank you for citing sources, by the way). I agree with their recommendations about cannibalism wholeheartedly; if the light is making them fidgety/cannibalistic, turn it down! I suppose I should have mentioned something about that in the article. If you tell people supplemental light is good, there will always be a minority that think adding more and more light will always be better. As long as we are talking nuance, you should check this page out:
http://web.uconn.edu/poultry/poultrypages/light_menu.html
Look at the section about wavelength; another thing you can do if your chickens are responding poorly (cannibalism) to light is use a color filter to make it bluer. According to them, it is the orange-red end of the spectrum stimulates laying, but can also stimulate cannibalism (presumably if you overdo it).
@roostersandhens , I think you could probably get your hens to stop laying by keeping them in a dark coop for a few hours in the morning/evening in the summertime. Essentially you would be providing supplemental darkening instead of supplemental lighting
However, what Lady of McCamley suggests sounds easier, and also like it would bring in some good karma.
