Smal chicken houses in rural areas will benefit from the improved technology in solar lighting and solar panels. In all forms of poultry farming – whether you are doing layers for eggs or broilers for their meat, lighting is one aspect that for relatively small effort you can really improve your returns. Chicken Houses in South Africa are generally powered by coal and electricity for heating the house. Gas heaters can also be used to heat the house and curtains are used to cool the house.  Poultry fans are also used to help with air circulation and cooling – and these require electricity. A narrow poultry house – less than 4 meters wide, will generally not need fans. The cross ventilation that happens when the curtains are down is usually enough to keep the house at acceptable temperatures. Problems with heat generally come on the wider chicken houses – 6m up to 14m wide. Small poultry houses are not wider than 6 metres – but large farms with large chicken houses generally have very wide houses.

Solar panels are not used in chicken houses in South Africa. With our massive amount of sunshine it is a great pity – especially for small poultry farmers who are farming chickens in remote areas. The technology is just not strong enough or cheap enough. One way of using this technology is too look at the home market – small units designed for home use and gardens often provide solutions for small coops. A quick wander around a large hardware store will reveal a wealth of solutions for small farmers.

The best small chicken house in South Africa is the Yellow door poultry houses manufactured by Chicken Shack Agencies. Poultry equipment in South Africa is mostly imported but there a a few poultry equipment manufacturers operating in S.A. manufacturing nest boxes and layer cages. Items like Val nipples and Impex nipples, gas heaters, slope regulators and batch weighers are all imported.

Chicken houses that use solar lights are a very good option in South Africa. These lights are easily installed and really cheap to maintain. Lights used for poultry farming are no different from other lights. While many of the larger farms and operations have experimented with colored lights – blue lights, green light and red lights – for the average small farmer wishing to increase the amount of eggs their hens lay, or increase the growth speed of their broilers, white lights do the job! Solar panels are not needed with modern solar powered lights – each light has it’s own small solar panel and battery. If the lights are correctly installed they will produce enough light for the few hours that are need each night and morning for an increase in results. The lights are similar to those small garden lights that are sold in the hardware – they work in exactly the same way. Energy is stored during the day, enough energy in fact for powering the light all night, and then it is released at night. You will probably need some kind of a timer as you do not want the birds in light all night – this is not at all good for the birds. An extra 2 or 3 hours is all you need to get a significant improvement in your growth of broilers or a higher egg yield from your layers.