LED lighting for broilers and layers now available

NEWS HIGHLIGHT

LED lighting for broilers and layers now available
The world's first LED light bulb designed and manufactured specifically for the egg and
broiler segments of the poultry industry, the Glo Agrilamp was launched late last week by U.K.-based Greenage Lighting.

The world's first LED light bulb designed and manufactured specifically for the egg and
broiler segments of the poultry industry, the Glo Agrilamp was launched late last week by U.K.-based Greenage Lighting.

The company says the lights will dramatically reduce lighting-related energy consumption by up to 90 per cent and
incorporates important animal welfare benefits.

The Glo Agrilamp offers technology and environmental benefits over existing lighting solutions for the poultry industry. It has been developed in collaboration with Noble Foods , the largest supplier of eggs and egg products to retailers and manufacturers in the U.K. Over the past four months, Noble Foods has been lead tester of the Glo Agrilamp, installing it across three of its sites, reaching a total of 30,000 hens.
 
During testing, the new LED lamp has been fine-tuned to achieve the perfect balance of light output and colour-rendering index for housed poultry environments. Levels of infrared, which can have a destructive impact on hen behaviour, have been significantly reduced compared with incandescent light bulbs and the Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL). In addition, the Glo Agrilamp has been designed to vibrate less than CFLs and is fully dimmable, creating a dusk-to-dawn environment, as well as reducing heat emission by 50 per cent.
 
Early tests at Noble Foods show that optimum LED lighting is helping to maximize egg production and the behavioural responses of poultry. It reports that at its rearing site, there has been a marked improvement in chickens finding their feed earlier which has led to their body weights being above average. There has also been an initial 0.5% drop in mortality rate. In Noble Foods’ free range and colony sites being tested, the birds also appear calmer with reduced levels of pecking and aggression.
 
From a safety and environmental perspective, the Glo Agrilamp is non-toxic and can be safely and easily recycled. Dangers of the CFL have to date not been widely publicised but anecdotal evidence suggests they could have an adverse effect on some people’s health, owing to the mercury and hazardous gases that they contain. When a CFL is broken, government advice is to vacate the room and ventilate for at least 15 minutes.

The Glo Agrilamp has a guaranteed lifespan of 25,000 hours, bringing with it long-term cost savings. Greengage Lighting will be offering leasing packages to large farms in order to reduce up-front costs.