Hens prefer fluorescents
When it comes to lighting, chickens are choosy. They’ll take fluorescents any day.
University of Guelph poultry science researcher Tina Widowski and professor Ian Duncan have designed a test that allows laying hens to choose between traditional incandescent lights and more energy-efficient fluorescents.
“The chickens’ choice is clear,” said Widowski. “We asked them and they said they prefer fluorescents.”
Chickens have sensitive eyes. Research in Europe suggests they may be bothered by the flicker of fluorescent lights, sometimes used in commercial poultry farms.
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Human eyes can’t detect flickers in lights when they’re above 65 hertz (65 flickers a second), but a chicken can detect them at about twice that speed. That poses problems from both ethical and production standpoints, said Widowski.
If the fluorescent lights are judged a major annoyance to the chickens, keeping them in that environment could constitute unnecessary cruelty. And if the birds aren’t content, they could produce fewer eggs.
The researchers designed nesting boxes that allowed the chickens to choose between the two types of lighting. The boxes are almost a square metre in size and have a partition with light-blocking doorways. They installed incandescent bulbs in one half of each box and fluorescent bulbs in the other, then shot videos to see where the 16 hens used in the test spent their time.
The results were unexpected. The hens spent about 70 percent of their time in the fluorescent-lit halves, which Widowski said is a clear sign that they actually preferred that lighting.
Still, the researchers didn’t know if the chickens could actually see the flicker. So they designed an experiment with the same boxes that would let the animals choose between regular fluorescents and special electronic ones that create a flicker thousands of times beyond the vision of a chicken.
They discovered that the chickens spent an equal amount of time in each half of the boxes and continued to function normally. This contradicted the European findings, so they set out to find out why.
Widowski suggested that the difference in power frequencies might be a source of the problem.
In Europe, a fluorescent bulb flickers at 100 hertz, slightly slower than in North America and possibly within the visual range of a chicken.
In addition, the lights used in the European tests may have been set at a greater brightness than those on a typical farm.
– University of Guelph
