Glanalders Project Update July 2024
With the last flock of birds leaving in March 2024 and the shed cleaned out, the opportunity was taken to replace the shed’s previous 2ft light strips with 3 lines of 35 48V/9.6W warm white LED (light emitting diode) lights.
Poultry have greater sensitivity to colours and vision on the ultraviolet spectrum. The presence of different colours, intensity and periods of light can all have an influence on their behaviour and performance. LED lighting has a better spread than conventional lighting, eliminating dark spots and reducing stress. LED’s therefore have the potential to provide for better stimulation of the birds’ natural day/night behaviour and improve performance by:
- Increasing egg production - by up to 38 eggs per hen
- Improving feed conversion rate
- Reduction in incidences of floor eggs
LED lighting has also shown improvements in bird health and welfare by:
- Reducing mortality
- Reducing antibiotic costs
- Improving feather cover
With the new crop of Burford Brown birds having arrived early May, monitoring of their performance will be done using the ‘Eggbase’ software system. The data will be analysed and compared with the previous flock’s performance and will include:
- Egg production
- Hen mortality
- Feather cover
- Water consumption
- Feed consumption
- Feed conversion
Lux of light will also be recorded and compared, and energy use and costs for both types of lighting will also be calculated and compared. Energy self-sufficiency for the two lighting systems will be compared to assess if the energy produced by the solar panels accounts for a higher percentage of the enterprise’s energy requirements with the LED lights.
