How to Light your Chicken Coop for Less than $50 with no Electricity
Have you ever wished you had lights in your chicken coop? Are you tired of using a flashlight or the light from your cell phone screen to try to see inside the coop at night?
But do you think you couldn't possibly light your coop if you had no electricity running to it? I feel your pain and had those same problems. So I decided to do something about it.
When we moved to Maine and set up our new chicken coop, I opted not to run electricity out to the coop.
I didn't want to be tempted to heat my coop in the winter, knowing deep down that my chickens would be able to weather frigid Maine winters just fine with lots of straw, good ventilation, and warming treats before bed.
But that also meant no lights in the coop.
While I'm not a proponent of artificially supplementing the natural light in my coop through the winter to force my hens to lay, there are times when a light in the chicken coop comes in handy.
Like to do nightly head counts and say goodnight, to investigate a ruckus in the middle of the night or just to clean the coop on a dark, drizzly rainy day.
I do have some battery-operated twinkle lights in the storage area, but they're more for "ambiance" then to provide any real light.
Being thrifty and economical, I knew there had to be a safe, practical, INEXPENSIVE way to light my coop. After putting my head together with a friend who is better at "guy stuff" than I am, we found it!
e figured out a simple, inexpensive way to light my coop without having to run electricity.
So I have installed a hanging farmhouse light in the main coop/sleeping area and a smaller one in the storage room of my coop.
I love that the lights work on batteries and there's a remote, so with one click, my coop is lit up! And there's no danger of fire whatsoever. And let me reiterate. These are not meant to extend the daylight hours to force laying through the winter.
At most, the lights will be on for mere minutes while I tuck the girls in at night and do my nightly head count, or on for the few minutes it takes me to collect eggs on a dark, winter morning.
So today I'm sharing with you how I installed lights in my chicken coop for under $50 without using electricity!
And if you have an old light fixture laying around that you can repurpose, your cost drops to almost nothing!
How to Light your Chicken Coop for Less than $50 with no Electricity
First, you will need to install the batteries into the puck light and screw the top of the light on securely. Next, super glue the back of the puck light onto the light fixture where the bulb would go.
Now you're ready to install your lights!
You'll need to decide how low you want your lights to hang, and just snip off any extra cord and wiring to adjust the light to the proper height. I tied the end of the cord in a knot to secure it inside the top part of the fixture.
(You actually won't be needing any of the other copper wiring, so feel free to remove it all while you're at it, with the wire snips.)
Once you have the length right, position the fixture where you want it and screw the metal bar that come with the light fixture into a ceiling support in your coop. Then screw the light fixture to that.
And that's it!
The lights I used came with a remote, so I just added some Velcro to the remote so I could stick it to the wall of my coop just inside the door for easy access.
The lights provide just enough light for me to see my girls when I say goodnight, and count them without shining a bright flashlight beam into their eyes! We all are loving the new coop lights!
And in fact, I loved how this came out so much...check out what I did for lights outside my coop...
