LED lighting: does it work for chickens

[thegawd]

I bought a tonne of 12v leds off ebay from china. all different kinds and they work fantastic out at camp and in the interior of my truck. I only charged my battery at camp once and that was the day before I hooked it up and changed the bulbs. about 2 months later I threw a couple decent solar panels up top, and that day the voltage was still 12.4v. very impressed. do you use 12v for light Tom?

[baronrenfrew]

Spy stuff has been around a long time. Remember the old IBM "golf ball" typewriters? The gov't figured out that it takes a different amount of power to type each letter.. So they could monitor your power consumption and recreate what you're typing. Then they could phone you and your phone wouldn't ring.. But you'd be connected.. They could put their end on an amplifier and everything could be heard from your end.. your phone would be a microphone.. and it would automatically disconnect if you pick up. This is stuff from the 1960's...

[TomK]

Al...nope..the system is a fully integrated unit...48 vdc to AC...the LED bulbs all have an inverter built into the base to convert the AC in the house circuitry to the DC that the LEDs in the bulbs require....it all works smooth as silk...but that inverter circuitry in the bulbs can be built cheap in inferior bulbs and throw off incredible EMF...can interfere with other electronics in the home...buy quality

[windwalkingwolf]

Yes, they will work, it does NOT matter much what spectrum they are (if you can see the light, it will work), but two points: One is like Tom said, the cheap bulbs tend to be crap. If you have free-to-air t.v. as I do, the cheapies can interfere with t.v. signal from quite a distance away. One in our greenhouse 50 feet away completely blocked several channels anytime it was turned on.
Two is that additional light for hens works best when it's pointed at the top of their heads. No, really! If the light enters the tops of their eyes, it stimulates the pineal gland if I recall correctly...I'll have to do some digging to find the articles I read on that. LEDs are very directional and don't diffuse light well, so if you have a lot of hens, you might want to put several directly over head instead of just, say, one on the wall. Overhead lighting will reduce the total number of hours they need to lay well from 14 to about 10. At my old place, both girl coops had big skylights (really just big old panes of thick glass) and laid well all winter without any additional lighting at all. When they slowed, I knew it was time to clean the glass LOL. I'm really missing those coops now, only one smallish north facing window in the layer coop and I'm not getting any eggs! But with the stress of the move and now winter, I'm leaving them be for now. Will be putting some LEDs in there soon though, probably January if the naturally longer days don't jump start them, and start increasing light hours. I refuse to buy store bought eggs!

[Skinny rooster]

Those darn pigtail fluorescent lights, don't use them, not just because of the mercury but I had a post on PSO where the darn thing nearly started a fire in my barn. I heard that they can start to burn when they are about to burn out, turns out to be true.

Al did you know that the X-Files is coming back on t.v., there is a whole episode where the government watches people feeding chickens, you might be there, muhaha!
Ross, don't encourage him, besides I know you are joking because Bigfoot is here doing a duet with Elvis on the steps of their spaceship.
No offense Al, just teasing.

[thegawd]

HAHAHAHAHA None taken! besides I technically cant know im crazy... that must mean im sane!

[ross]

Hey guys yu know all those pics of Bigfoot that are fuzzy . Has nothin to do with the camera work Bigfoot is fuzzy . He is 1/2 in our dimension & 1/2 in another . Go Figure . Luck
SR that proves there's more than one , you got one too .

[PAJenn]

Great strides are being made with regard to LED lighting and horticulture. I can only assume that research is being done on LED lighting in poultry barns?

Check out all the pretty pink (red and blue spectrum actually) LED lights at Colorado State University.
https://source.colostate.edu/philips-pa ... on-at-csu/

[PAJenn]

Received a eNews this morning about a FREE Webinar: LED Lighting for Indoor Farmers. It's really geared to horticultural lighting. However, if you are truly interested in LED lighting with regard to poultry, you could take what you like and leave the rest (make some assumptions). On the registration page, the organizers have listed 10 Things Indoor Farmers Should Know About LED Lighting.

http://blog.brightagrotech.com/10-thing ... d-lighting

[Robbie]

Just waiting for Justin's OK before I'm going to need that kind of LED system!! Ho-leee!
"Indoor farmers" ........ LOL