The debate over lighted chicken coops

There is a long standing debate in the sustainable farming community about whether it is healthy for chickens to have supplemental artificial light during the winter hours or allow then natural light only and therefore molt.  We have chosen what to do on our farm again this year and would like to share our reasoning.



The background - light and chickens

Eggs in chickens (as most birds) are produced when the hormone levels in the chicken dictate producing an egg. These hormone levels are controlled almost exclusively by light. If the chicken receives less than 12 hours a day of light, egg production stops and molting occurs. Molting is when the chicken puts all of its energy into renewing the body; new feathers, renew organs inside, etc. It is a perfectly normal occurrence that would happen in the wild in much of the world. When the chicken receives more than 14 hour of light per day, it begins egg production again.

There seems a perfectly reasonable explanation for this in nature. Days get shorter as winter approaches. This reduction of light is a hint to the chicken that producing eggs and the resulting offspring should be paused. Baby chick are very susceptible to cold temperatures for the first month or two. If egg production continued during the winter most chicks would suffer from exposure and die. Nature prevents this by stopping egg production when cold weather is immanent. Since the chicken is on "egg vacation" it only makes sense to use that break to renew the body and prepare for the next year. 

(Isn't nature awesome! the more we learn about the interconnected and well planned out relationships between the forces of life, the more impressive is the world we live in)

Natural light only

Those on the side of natural light only point correctly to the fact that in nature for much of the world the cycle of molting and egg production according to weather is expected. Most sustainable farms (including ours) attempt to create a small controlled natural environment where the animals live a sheltered but totally free and natural life. This dictates that no artificial light be used to prolong egg production into the winter. They point to factory prison farms where light is provided 24 hours a day to ensure top egg production, which obviously disrupts the chickens natural sleep cycles and wrecks havoc on the nutritional content of the eggs produced.  There is no doubt that this approach is sad and borders on animal cruelty, not to mention produces eggs that are marginally eatable.

Natural plus artificial light

Those on the side of supplemental light point to the fact that molting is not a necessary part of the chickens life cycle, and in fact most breeds produce as many eggs during their lifetime whether they molt or not. Plus the fact that not all chickens will molt when light drops below 12 hours a day. Many will simply stop producing eggs and wait for spring to bring the sun back. There seems to be no evidence that not molting is harmful to the chicken. Those that supplement on a sustainable farm never take the approach of factory prison farms. Instead only enough hours of light per day are added to meet the 14 hour requirement, allowing the chickens to sleep naturally.

Our position

At little sprouts farm we have chosen to supplement light during the winter. The deciding factor for me is realization that molting actually depends totally on where the chicken lives. At the equator this debate is pointless since days are always 12 hours long all year. In Alaska chickens would only receive enough light to lay eggs for a couple months per year. This tells me that molting is not a required natural cycle that birds need, it is more a mechanism of nature that prevents chicks from being born when its not likely that they will survive.  It seems more of a warning and precautionary mechanism than a natural life cycle.



Our approach

We do desire to keep life as natural as possible for our animals, so we have come up with what I like to call "natural supplementation of light". Here are the high points:

• One fluorescent light per pen
• It doesn't seem to matter what color of light is used, as long as its bright enough "to read a newspaper by". We chose fluorescent for the power savings AND because in the cold fluorescent light have a nasty habit of taking forever to warm up enough to glow. I like how this gives a nice sunrise effect instead of a glaring light popping on without warning. This creates much lower stress waking and is .. more natural for the birds.
• Timer set to turn on lights before sunrise and stay till mid morning
• Its important to add the light in the morning instead of evening. the birds naturally use sundown as a warning to return to the coop and rest for the night in safety from predators. Adding light in the evening would disrupt this cycle and perhaps leave chickens standing helpless in the dark outside the coop all night.
• Timer adjusted every month to create a total of 14 to 16 hours of daylight per day
• We simply take the new sundown time, backtrack 16 hours, and set the timer to turn on at that time in the morning. Here in southern Oregon that means that the dead of winter requires our sunrise takes place about 3am since sunset stretches into the day as far as between 4 and 5 pm
• Careful attention paid to power outages to ensure timer stays correct
• One strong warning with this approach is that once you start lighting a coop, you must be diligent with it. Even a day or two with suddenly less light can cause the chickens stress, loss egg production, and molting.
• Close the coop doors and windows each night and open them after sunrise
• We learned that this is necessary during the winter because if we leave the windows open as we do in summer, the chickens will wake up, see the "sunlight" head outdoors and see the "night" and go to sleep on their feet. If we forget to close the windows one night, the next morning we have sleeping chickens standing all over the yard. In this state the birds are almost "frozen" in place and wont even move for a honking car horn. It is dangerous both because of predators and because that is again limiting their light exposure for the day.
• As a secondary precaution, I leave the outdoor porch lights on all night in the winter so that if the chickens do get out somehow, they will head to the lighted house and hang out under the porch light. Not optimal but better than the dark driveway!

So, Little Sprouts will have eggs all winter. Some chickens still stop laying or at least lay fewer than an egg a day, but overall egg production continues. Nevertheless the chickens have a almost completely normal life, worlds better than the poor chickens imprisoned int he factory farms with 2 foot square cages, artificial food, and 24 hours a day of artificial light. Our chickens are still free to roam and hunt for food in the fresh air and sunshine every day.