Chicken and lighting programs

Research has examined the use of artificial lighting in the environment as an effective tool to manipulate certain processes, affect desirable behavior and encourage certain conditions for many decades. Much of this is limited in application because of the type of lamp used, the incomplete reporting of the lamp characteristics ( description of color output and light intensity are often absent) and their use of light meters which report human perception in the environment instead of establishing the level of light the birds perceives of from its environment. The use of LED has emerged and is now being utilized by the poultry industry, It must be remembered that LED lighting is a new technology having developed into widespread commercial applications over the past 10years. Until then various fluorescent, incandescent and metal halide lamps were the only source of artificial lighting for agricultural, and as mentioned earlier, lighting systems using these lamps are severely restricted in in their flexibility to vary either light wavelength or intensity in the rearing environment.