LED lighting specialists, Greengage Lighting, has launched the world's first light-emitting diode (LED) light bulb designed and manufactured specifically for the egg and broiler segments of the poultry industry, which dramatically reduces lighting-related energy consumption by up to 90 per cent and incorporates important animal welfare benefits.

The Glo Agrilamp offers significant 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 UK. 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 per cent 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.

Poultry farmers have the additional reassurance that 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.

John Matcham, sales director of Greengage Lighting, commented, "We are delighted to be launching the Glo Agrilamp to the global poultry industry, following nine months of intensive testing and refinement. It sets a revolutionary new standard in poultry lighting, reducing power consumption by up to 90 per cent and improving animal welfare for years to come. Early signs have shown that there will be high demand for an LED lamp that has been designed specifically for the needs of farmers and their hens."

Nigel Youd, Group Environmental Manager for Noble Food, added, "We were keen to look at a new lighting technology that would benefit the welfare of our birds. We have been so impressed with the Agrilamp that we have already committed ourselves to installing 7,000 bulbs in a new site being built in Nottinghamshire which will house one million birds, and it’s highly likely that we will take a further 20,000 bulbs as part of a retro-fit."

Andrew Joret, deputy chairman of the BEIC (British Egg Industry Council) and technical director of Noble Foods, said, "The Glo Agrilamp marks a new departure in lighting for the poultry industry, bringing with it significant cost savings for the farmer. Throughout Noble Foods' testing there has been no evidence of this energy reduction causing detriment to the bird, and in fact we have seen the opposite. This can only be a good thing for the poultry farmers across the globe."

Further Reading

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