Here’s one thing about lighting you may not know: it has a huge impact on how chickens behave. In fact, lighting is so important to the poultry industry that it’s been observed that too much light during brooding and grow-out can lead to diminished performance, which in turn leads to reduced profits.
While new poultry barns featuring solid sidewalls and tunnel ventilation systems have been designed to be more energy efficient to run, using artificial lighting in them can be a bit of a problem—with these barns, artificial lighting is the only way to go. The traditional use of 60-watt incandescent light in a typical poultry barn can account for as much as 30 to 40 percent of the total electrical costs of that barn, and that could still rise on its size and flock age.
