“Four attentions” for supplemental lighting when using chicken cages

In the process of raising chickens in automatic chicken battery cage system, farmers know that laying hens need reasonable lighting. If only natural light is used, it often fails to achieve good results. Therefore, when lighting the chickens, it is necessary to use the lighting equipment for manual compensation. Reasonable illumination is beneficial to the growth and production performance of laying hens, so it is a very important task. Remind the farmers, in addition to the time to light and the number of lighting equipment, pay attention to four points:

1. The illumination should be stable: when the average farmer chooses to compensate the laying hens, they start from the age of 19 weeks. When you start setting the lighting time, you should add it slowly from short to long, and add half an hour a week. Farmers should be aware that when the light is added to 16 hours a day, it should be kept in stable light. Then the light of each day can’t be long or short. The best way is to make up each light sooner or later.

2. Intensity should be appropriate: Farmers should pay attention to the light intensity of the lighting equipment. For normal laying hens, the required light intensity is generally 2.7 watts. However, the use of chicken cage culture, the use of multi-layered three-dimensional farming form, so the bottom of the flock is easy to feel the light, so the time to set the light intensity should be increased, generally 3.3 to 3.5 watts per square meter.

3. Illumination should be uniform: the farmers should pay attention to the time when installing the lighting equipment. The autor suggested that the bulbs in the chicken houses of the farmers should be 40 to 60 watts, and then the height of the lamps should be about 2 meters. The distance between each bulb is recommended to be about 3 meters. Other farmers should pay attention to the fact that if your house requires more than two rows of bulbs, it should be arranged crosswise so that I can evenly light the light. The distance should be half of the bulb spacing. Also, be sure to replace the damaged bulb at any time. Wipe the bulb once a week to maintain proper brightness in the house.

4. It is advisable to use red light: there are many kinds of light colors in the lighting equipment. The farmers should pay attention to the difference in light color of the lighting equipment and the wavelengths are different. Tests have shown that hens under red light have higher egg production rates than hens under other light conditions when other conditions are the same, so the authors suggest that farmers should choose red light equipment.

The above four points are the “four notes” in the process of raising the chickens in the battery layer chicken cages that the authors describe for the farmers. Farmers must make reasonable plans to make up for the light, and lay the foundation for the production performance of the laying hens.