Lighting for Cages

[terrylt7]

I am interested in knowing what some of the lighting that is used for cages? Thanks

Terry

[Sally]

A few years ago, the thinking was that you needed to have full-spectrum lighting for the health of your caged birds. There were some specialty avian lights that were quite pricey. Now, the thinking has changed somewhat--that it is difficult to supply sufficient full-spectrum lighting to meet the health needs of birds, and that giving adequate vitamin D3 supplies what they need, so lighting can be just what we want to have to please ourselves. I use mostly fluorescent tube lights, what are called full-spectrum or natural daylight bulbs, and not too expensive. I keep lights on my birds so that I can regulate the day length they are exposed to, and because the lights show them up better.

[L in Ontario]

Ditto what Sally said, but I use 'natural/daylight' mini spot lights in clamp-light holders. They are in each cage (except those under the 4' flourescent tubes). Here's a pic of part of my birdroom.

[cindy]

I went to Wal Mart and got the 18" under the counter light fixtures, replaced the bulbs that were included in the lights with 18" full spectrum/daylight bulbs (also sold at WalMart. they had the best prices for both). I did remove the plastic that goes over the bulb and turned the fixture upside down on the top of the cage (bulb does not touch the wire of the cage).

I also have the two long metal light fixtures like Liz has but I angled my cages and can't use them on this set up. If I had the cages back to back on a large table or shelf setup then I could use them. I have them stored for the future...you know if we get more birds or that cute little finch fairy happens by!

[ac12]

I use daylight compact flourescent (the curled up type) and screw it into a clamp on reflector. At first I thought the full spectrum was better for the birds, but then seeing the conflicting comments, I now use it primarily for color. The daylight tube has the cleanest color, so your birds colors won't look tinted because of colored tubes. I have one cage with "cool white" tube, and you can see the difference between the cool white and daylight tubes.

[terrylt7]

Sally
You mentioned adequate Vitamin D supplies, what do you use? Thanks

Terry

[DVBourassa]

I went to Wal Mart and got the 18" under the counter light fixtures, replaced the bulbs that were included in the lights with 18" full spectrum/daylight bulbs (also sold at WalMart. they had the best prices for both). I did remove the plastic that goes over the bulb and turned the fixture upside down on the top of the cage (bulb does not touch the wire of the cage).

I use this same method. I have them on timers so I don't have to be home or out of bed to turn them on and off.

[cindy]

I need to get a timer. I have all the cords in a main pwer strip that has a switch. On colder mornings if we are delaying road biking until it warms up it would be nice to have them on a timer, so I don't have to get up to keep them on schedule.

[L in Ontario]

I have them on timers so I don't have to be home or out of bed to turn them on and off.

Ditto re timers. They are a god-send! And I have the Christmas nightlights also on timers that overlap the regular daylights by 5 minutes in the evening and morning.

[ac12]

About the timers.
Initially I was trying to do it on the cheap, so I got the mechanical timers. And they worked fine, as I had plug in night lights with a light sensor, so when the cage lights went out, the night lights turned on. And that worked fine for the few cages I had.

But now with more cages, I decided to switch from individual night lights to the string of Christmas lights, as being more economical than getting 6 more night lights. But this lead to a problem with the timer. The mechanical timers are very difficult to precisely set. In other words, I cannot calibrate it to be more precise than +/- 15 minutes, and it is usually worse than that. So I broke down and got 2 digital timers, so I can better control the overlap when the night lights come ON and the cage lights go OFF. Right now I have a 10 min overlap, so the birds have a 10 min warning that the cage lights will go out.

In the end the 2 strings of Christmas lights and the 2 digital timers costed me more than 6 automatic night lights would have. But it did reduce the number of extension cords I had running to each night light.

[cindy]

Target has Christmas up already, can you believe it! I did notice that they have a small package of fiberoptic lights on a strand. It runs on batteries (not to happy with that, plug in would be good).

The lights are like a 14 the sixe of mini twinkle lightS and cost $6.99 a pack.

They also have LED lights, they come clear and colored


http://www.target.com/Micro-String-Ligh ... detaillink