Boosting Winter Egg Production: Innovative Lighting Solutions for Backyard Chickens

This episode highlights the challenges of maintaining egg production in winter and introduces a practical solution based on light exposure. By experimenting with a smart red LED light to simulate longer daylight hours, listeners can discover effective methods to boost their hens' egg-laying potential sustainably.

• Explanation of how light influences chicken ovulation 
• Personal anecdote about my winter egg production dilemma 
• Details of the red light experiment and its setup 
• Clear results showing improved egg yield in response to light 
• Neighbor's experience with unexpected egg production 
• Recommendations for humane lighting practices for backyard chickens

Feel free to ask a question or leave a comment.

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Episode Transcript

Sylvie (00:02):
Are we ready, pawpaw?
Hello friends and welcome toChicken.
Every Day, a podcast for you,the backyard chicken enthusiasts
, and mine.
Your host is my Pawpaw, gary,Gary Valerie of Senla Backyard
Chickens.
Here we have fun while sharingideas and learning how to care
for our foul-feathered friends.
Check out our videos at Senlathat's C-E-N-L-A Backyard

(00:24):
Chickens on YouTube, tiktok andFacebook.
So, without further ado, let'sstart today's show.
How was that?

Gary (00:34):
Hey guys, Gary, with CENLA Backyard Chickens with you
again.
It's wintertime, January, it'scold outside, you're not getting
a lot of daylight and, ifyou're like me, your chicken's
egg production it's gone down tovery little all the way, maybe
to even practically nothing.
My next-door neighbor thatlives over there.
She's got about 20 laying hensand she's getting one or two
eggs a week if she's lucky rightnow.

(00:55):
And if you don't know, a hen'sovulation cycle, in other words
how often she ovulates andproduces an egg, is based on how
many hours of daylight thatthey receive, and for good egg
production a hen needs a good 16hours or so of daylight.
Chicken houses that are just inbusiness to put out as many eggs
as possible put artificiallights in there 24-7,.

(01:17):
I do not believe in doing that.
I think it's just a little bit,you know, on the cruel side to
chickens.
But I did want to explore thisand report back to y'all and to
see if it made much difference.
So I started doing some morereading and some research and,
according to the research that Ifound, it's the red light in
the sun's rays that reallyhelped pick these, these birds

(01:39):
up and get them going.
So let me show you what I didand I'll tell you the results
about it.
I am fortunate enough that theback of my coop here this is my
metal shop and I haveelectricity in there, so I'm
lucky enough that I'm able torun electricity to my chicken
coop Right here.
I'm sorry, there's not muchgood light.

(02:00):
Right here is the back side ofthe coop.
Right there that is a Wi-Fiextender and I have Alexa.
Right there is an Alexa device.
Okay, so what I did right here,I put a lamp with an with a
smart bulb an LED smart bulb,not a heat lamp, an LED smart

(02:25):
bulb and what I did is Iconnected it with Alexa and I
said okay, at 430 in the morning, I want you to come on with the
color red at 5%, 5 right thereand spend the next hour slowly
ramping up to maximum.
I didn't want to just all of asudden flood my chicken coop

(02:47):
with red light and you can seein the picture that I'm showing
you what it looked like when itwas up to maximum.
So it's spend an hour going tothat 8 o'clock in the morning.
It would turn off, of course,by 8 o'clock, actually by 7.15,
7.30,.
The birds are all gone and out,running around in the yard and
everything, and I did that for alittle over a month.
I wanted to see if it made adifference, and it made a

(03:08):
tremendous difference in my eggproduction Now, right now I am
down to eight layable hens thatcan lay.
One of them turned broody, sothat went to seven right there.
About two and a half weeks intothis experiment, I'm getting
four and five eggs a day, everyday.
They are really laying well.

(03:29):
Let me get over here with somebetter light I'm sorry it's late
in the evening and the sun'sgoing down.
Getting a lot of good eggproduction, I mean really was
working well and so I said, allright, I'm not going to keep
doing this with them because mybird you know, my wife and I, we
don't need that many eggs.
Usually it's just two of ushere, but I want to see how well
it worked and it workedfantastic.

(03:49):
So I pulled the light awayafter about, I think, four weeks
and it takes them a while toramp down and right now it's
been about a week and a halfsince I got it.
I removed the lamp out of thereand I'm still getting three
eggs a day, sometimes four eggsa day, but it is starting to
slow down.
So this does make a difference,and the reason I tell you guys

(04:10):
this if you need the eggs, thisis a possibility, you know.
If you're selling them or yourfamily needs them for food, then
yeah, do this.
But what I like about what Idid is slowly ramping up that
light, not just flooding themwith light all of a sudden, and
then they go to bed every nightwith natural light.
So when the sun starts goingdown, the chickens come in here

(04:34):
and they go to bed like theyshould, and I slowly bring that
light to them, starting at 4 30in the morning, and it really
really made a difference.
And if you want to try it, giveit a shot.
Don't use a heat lamp.
Here's a funny thing.
We're at a party with somefriends, a nice get together
that we have, and one of myfriend's daughters has chickens,
and she was telling me that herdaughter just couldn't explain.

(04:56):
She's just getting tons andtons of eggs all of a sudden and
we're having extreme cold snap.
It's been down in the teens inLouisiana.
That's some seriously coldweather and she didn't
understand why, and so we got totalking a little bit and she
said well, her daughter does usea heat lamp in the coop.
And I said, really?
I said, is it a red lamp?
She said yeah.
I said does she turn it on oroff, or leave it on?

(05:17):
She just leaves it off.
I said there's your reasonright there.
That's why she's getting all ofthose eggs.
She didn't even realize thatshe was trying to put
supplemental heat in her chickencoop and ended up in the
process giving herself tons andtons of eggs, more than she can
eat.
So if you want to give it ashot, give it a shot.
See what you think about it,let me know if it works for you,

(05:39):
but this is something that canwork.
Again, I did not use a heatlamp myself.
I used a smart bulb connectedto my Lexus that slowly ramped
up and I did it in the red color.
So if this helps, see you allsoon.
Bye-bye.

Sylvie (05:54):
That's all we have time for today.
I really hope you enjoyedlistening to the podcast.
Be sure to watch our videos.
So, on behalf of my PawPaw,Gary, and me, Sylvie, thanks for
listening.