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Show New Poultry House Lighting Is Advocated on New Jersey Farms By IRA MILLER Form Electrification Bureau It results elsewhere prove as successful as they have in southern New Jersey, it looks as if present poultry house lighting recommendations recommenda-tions are due for some changes. Lights still will be controlled by time switches to operate on sched- tions of eight-tenths to 1 foot candle. The poultrymen presented their problems to their power suppliers and considerable experimentation and study were conducted before the flood lamps were accepted. This type of lamp is available from nearly all light bulb manufacturers. It has silvered sides, coated with aluminum. Although its first cost is higher, the f ' V ? I ' i t , J NEW JEKSEY FARMERS light up with flood lamps. I i ules previously adopted, but the use of 40-watt lamps in cone shape reflectors re-flectors may give way to type R-30, 75-watt Hood lamps. Here's the story: standard recommendations call for 40-watt lamps to be hung 6 feet above the floor on the basis of one for every 200 square feet of floor area. New Jersey poultrymen found that these suggestions -worked fine as long as the reflectors were clean and there was enough lights to adequately ade-quately illuminate feeding and watering wa-tering areas, as well as perches. But when dust accumulated on the reflectors, they discovered that poultry poul-try houses went into involuntary dim-outs and that chickens refused to come down from their dark perches perch-es at night. The result was lower egg production. Also, these Jersey farmers farm-ers are of the opinion that the 40-watt 40-watt lamps do not provide enough light when installed as recommended. They advocate that illumination levels lev-els be raised to 3 to 5 foot candles, rather than follow present sugges- flood lamp has a longer life, burning approximately 2,000 hours as compared com-pared with 750 hours for comparable Mazda bulbs. The lamp has a built-in built-in reflector so dust and dirt have little adverse effect on its lighting qualities. This eliminates the extra work o cleaning reflectors. Properly located, such lamps will meet the new suggested higher illumination levels. Because of their higher wattage, the R (for reflector) 30, 75-watt lamps may or may not increase lighting light-ing costs. This depends on the number num-ber needed to do a satisfactory il-lummation il-lummation job. Costs of operation, however, are only relative it's the benefits obtained in extra income and less work that count. For example, ex-ample, one test case in New Jersey showed that, although a farmer paid 37',2 cents more per month for his electricity with flood lamps, his egg production increased 6'', adding $10.75 to his monthly gross income. |