GBov
Well-known member
I know that Christmas lights are enough to help keep quail in lay as the nights draw in but are they enough for chickens?
Christmas lights to help hens lay?
- Thread starter GBov
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I have used a string of clear ones [on a timer] for hen-house light-- they lasted 3 years.. no problems..
GBov
Well-known member
michaels4gardens":2sv7pluu said:
I love it here! Any question, no matter how odd, gets an answer and not "You want to do WHAT?"
I knew they were strong enough for quail but was not totally sure about chickens.
Just took the lights off the fence - yeh, I did mean to take them in after Christmas
- strung them in the hen cage and tried them out.They work just fine so my neighbors will have something else to talk about. :lol:
Deer Heart
Well-known member
Huh. I keep my birds in a 10ft x 10ft chainlink covered dog kennel as their "coop" (this is FL so ventilation is a much bigger issue than "cold"). I guess I'll be snatching this idea as this would be the most effective way of lighting their area up. Seeing as these kind of lights are rated for outdoor use and are pretty simple to string up when you have something for them to attach to. I've actually been debating on no artificial light at all because lamps just looked super dangerous to me for this use.
It would look weird for my neighbors though, I guess. I keep the chainlink poultry palace about 10 ft from my front fence so it's very view-able from the road and anyone driving by. Who knows, I might suddenly see others popping up all over as a result.
It would also be interesting running power all that way. I'll need some seriously long extension cords since it's more than 150 ft. from my house and the nearest power outlet.
It would look weird for my neighbors though, I guess. I keep the chainlink poultry palace about 10 ft from my front fence so it's very view-able from the road and anyone driving by. Who knows, I might suddenly see others popping up all over as a result.
It would also be interesting running power all that way. I'll need some seriously long extension cords since it's more than 150 ft. from my house and the nearest power outlet.
Pretty sure I ran a longer extension cord than that from the garage to the old wood oat bin I used a coop for awhile. :lol: In florida though it would be easy enough to just run a power cable and wire it direct from the nearest source to an outlet. Any basic electrician could do it or for that little of project I'd just ask around for someone who knows enough, buy the needed supplies, and probably not have to pay them more than $20-$30 to wire the ends for me if I didn't already know how from my grandpa being an electrician. In Iowa there is frozen ground and snow removal with equipment that often hits the ground or runs into raised wires if they aren't extremely high so it takes a little more effort to permanently run anything if it isn't along a structure or area that doesn't need access by more than a lawn mower.
I stapled a piece of 12/2 romex to the bottom of the top fence board, and ran the wire on the fence from the house out to the edge of road [about 250 ft] I put an outlet on the end of the wire [on the fence]- It was handy to have an outlet out there for lighting, and power tools. I had no problems with it ...
Yeah, all you need is any 12 gauge building wire that you can have cut off the roll at the hardware stores here. Then it's simply stripping a bit of each internal wire and connecting them so that the wires to your outlet match the end to your power source. It's usually all color coded and if the colors don't match the internet has a diagram of what color you should attach where. I was doing such things when I was 12 years old and I don't know how many things around the house now have a spliced cord covered in electrical tape to recover them from dog, chinchilla, and other accidents without having to replace the whole item it runs. A basic 2 or 3 (grounded) wire electrical cord is pretty simple. The only one I decided not worth tackling was an ethernet cord with around a dozen individual wires in it..... :lol:
GBov":eokmu4nk said:
Yup. Got to keep those neighbors guessing. I like to think of it as "sport". :lol:
GBov
Well-known member
Homer":3tzbx3nz said:
I love it here in our new area where I can fly my projects in full view. We lived in Deltona for years and everything had to be kept hidden. :evil:
The lights are super, they well outshine the 40-watt bulb I was using for extra heat on the chicks last winter. Even with my eyes, I could have read a small print book by them so job done!
And SO MUCH SAFER as they don't throw enough heat to start a fire!
If running power that far is too much of a pest DH, you could run several strings of Christmas Lights instead, give everyone even more to talk about! :lol:
You can get led bulbs that screw in like a fluorescent but with zero heat output and far more durable than the twisted tubes used to condense a fluorescent for that purpose. They are sometimes a bit expensive but practically run forever with the most efficient light. They are replacing many plant growing bulbs to get a lot of light without a tube or long string of leds that cover a lot of space.
Deer Heart
Well-known member
frankly I'd be paranoid as hell messing with the power source, either an exterior outlet that is where we plan to build a front porch in the next few years or the main circuit breaker which is fed directly from the power company's lines (which were buried due to my trees), it has a slot for my house, one for my well, and one for the ac so not a thing to play with honestly. I'd love to run a slot to the fence so I could put lights out there and get a power gate so I'm not always tracking mud to work. Also hotwire for the dogs, solar has failed me miserably.
GBov
Well-known member
The hens are laying again! The lights worked!
