Housing

Providing light for your chickens is actually easier than providing light for plants. There was a chicken farm just outside of town where I grew up. They used regular incandescent lights and would cover the windows in the winter. The chickens were never allowed to run free as this was a mass production farm, but they produced tons of eggs! If memory serves, the lights were spaced about 8 feet apart (in all directions) and were not too bright (compared to the lights in my house). The circadian rhythm was maintained and the chickens laid eggs. The cages were arranged above large troughs where their excrement was collected and eventually spread over the fields that grew the grain that fed the chickens. (Boy did the town stink when the wind was right!) The point is, chickens are easy. If you don't cage them and have a rooster or two, you should be successful at getting them to lay and reproduce with minimal electrical demand.

Offered by Roger.

I gave them to my sister next door for the winter since she had a good coop. She has kept a simple 75 or 100 watt bulb in the coop all winter, mostly to keep them warm. At 30 F or 40 F below zero, the coop still stayed at about 45 and above. She also has a few rabbits in the same coop. She has had more eggs than she can get rid of. Literally. We eat what we can. I think after the shift, if chickens are allowed to roam and act naturally, they will reproduce. In the coop, a little light, mostly for heat, and their own body heat will keep them going in the winter. Here is a way to build a chicken pen. It worked great and took no time at all to make. It is made from old bed springs. We tied them together with small rope. We happened to be able to find some used bed frames at an Army surplus place so we bought some up. A hog farmer locally used this idea for pigs. He said it worked great for that also. Some of the holes between some of the springs are just big enough for the hens to squeeze through, so sometimes a few "free rangers" hang out around the outside of the pen area. This type of chicken pen could also be considered a "chicken tractor" as well, as it would not be hard to move it around.

Offered by Clipper.