Lighting impacts the behavior, growth, and reproduction of poultry. Artificial lighting is extensively used in raising commercial poultry. The objective of this project was to determine the reliability, illuminance, and power consumption of alternative low-wattage light bulbs under conditions typical in poultry housing. A lighting test apparatus was used in a poultry house to allow simultaneous accelerated durability testing of up to four replications of three lamp types [one type of incandescent lamp, two different types of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLA and B), and one type of light emitting diode lamp (LED)]. Lamps were cycled from 05:00 to 21:00 for 16 cycles per day of 45-min lamps-on and 15-min lamps-off. All lamps were commercially available, non-agriculture specific lamps. No LED lamps failed during 416 d of testing, while the four incandescent lamp failures occurred at an average of 1968 h, and three of four CFLA lamps failures occurred at an average of 2640 h, and one of four CFLB lamps failed at 3312 h while the remainder of the CFLB lamps were operating at the conclusion of the test. The accelerated testing protocol may have influenced the early failures for some lamp types. Both types of CFLand LED lamps evaluated were more energy efficient than incandescent lamps and showed similar reduced relative energy usage compared to incandescent lamps (CFLA: 28%, CFLB: 30%, and LED 33%). CFL and LED lamps showed illuminance degradation during testing; the LED lamps tested showed the greatest decrease.
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