www.TheDoItYourselfWorld.com

Troy, you havn't mentioned the light in the chicken coupe. They are going to become a consumer of energy. They need extened daylight to lay every day. If you miss a day, they molt, no eggs for a while.

Also, check out the chicken tractor. You can move them every day if you want and keep refreshing their supply of free bugs. Saves feed and probably will reduce the ticks you get.

http://youtu.be/O3jitKoaKpU

And another one, this one small: http://youtu.be/nfGWZFXtxJQ

Another question, do bears like chicken?

Video of bunch of tractors and talk about protecting them from predictors.

http://youtu.be/5lumU8izcfQ

Another cool tractor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g48u1VC30Yk

I never heard about them needing more light. My hens laid one single egg the first morning and now nothing.

I put them into bed at dark and let them out when I get up in the morning to protect them from raccoons and other night predators, which are in abundance.

I do believe bears eat chickens because nearly everything else in the forest does. I know, I had 16 birds last year and was down to 3 when I moved. My ex landlord let one of those out and she got eaten. He kept the last two and told me to start over if I wanted to. Nice of him.

OH, yeah, and the chicken tractor. I will be making one soon.

There are some amazing plans out there. Just hope I can do as well. The chicken wire is my major problem due to the expense of it.

Hi Everyone

I have bred Poultry for quite some years. From around September Until Mid Febuary your hens will Stop laying eggs due to the daylight hours being to short. If you give them a few extra hours of light each day they will onlt then continue to lay eggs through out the winter months. But i prefer to give my hens a resting period from laying as they also moult at this time of year which uses alot of calcium. Calium is also used to make egg shells. So if you decide to give them a bit of extra light to get them to lay eggs during winter if they are moulting at the same time you should give them a little pinch of "limestone flour" which is used for tortoises to promote shell growth it can be purchased from ebay or a local pet shop. Limestone Flour helps poultry when mouting and when they lay there first egg to reduce the chances of soft egg shell and when moulting.

One thing techman i have had to now stop breeding poultry as i found when i hatched & raised the birds up you will always get aproportion of cockerals in the mix. And i found after caring for the chicks for months & watching them grow i found it very hard when you have to dispatch the cockerels. So you need to carefull think about breeding poultry as you will either find a new home or dispatch cockerals that you have raised.

I will try & post you some photo's of my birds that remain tomorrow

Troy, here are some links.

The site below is pretty cool. He talks more about how to do it and less about the reason why.

http://www.byexample.com/homestead/live ... ckens.html

The whole page is chicken info, the last segment at the bottom is: Supplemental Chicken Light

I'm betting you'll do this on pure DC some how as I don't think your system is big enough yet that your routinely leaving on the inverter.

It will be a fun project working out the lighting and especially the timing of the system. How do you run a timed light of DC? All that stuff is simple on AC. Might be easy on DC also, just haven't looked.

Here is a Wiki Answers page that seems to have a good write up giving the why's.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_can_you_m ... _more_eggs

I don't want to infer that I am any kind of an expert chicken chaser. I've purchased a couple of books in the past as the wife and I have been joking about keeping a few chickens. I'm still not sure if we are serious about it or not. However, from reading I am aware the number of hours of daylight has a big impact on egg production.

An off grid solution.

http://diy-renewable-energy.com/article ... christmas/

It's not a full detail but about what you'd expect, they use solar, battery and a 110v timer, but interestingly, they are driving a string of LED Christmas lights. There is no report if this was bright enough or not, but I suppose it worked.

What you would do is use a timer to turn on the lights in the morning so the sun comes up early for the chickens, even before you get up or open the door for them. If they need 13 hours to be safe. Sunrise, to Sunset 5:50 in NY is 8pm right now. So, you have enough light (ambout 14 hours currently) for now without any extra presuming your letting them "SEE" the light. If they are cooped up in the box until 9am you might have a problem. As the day's get shorter in fall and all through the winter, you won't get any (or many) eggs without the light.

It might still be a good idea to get it built and have it running from 6 am to daylight each day. This way if you sleep in or miss letting them out one time, they won't molt on you and quit laying. I understand it only takes one perceived short day and you can cause a molt which shuts them down for some period of time.

Dave