Lay well, oh hens, your tasty oval fruit!
Bask ye in light which I doth bring to thee
at such unseas’nable a time as this!

I’ve finally got the lights installed and working in the chicken coop!  I had to make a last-minute trip to Home Depot 20 minutes before closing time, but it was worth it!

The point of all this wiring is so that I can use artificial light to extend their day length.  Chickens lay best with 15 hours of daylight, but at this time of year in San José the days are only about 9 ½ hours long.  I’ve now got the coop plugged in to the same timer that I made to control the heat lamp in their brooder when they were just wee little chickadees.  The lights that I installed are AgriShift poultry barn lights from Once Innovations.  I’ll have to make some modifications to my controller in order to take advantage of the spectrum shifting features, but now that they are installed and working I can start the chickens on an earlier morning schedule than the sun alone would otherwise allow.  Spring is springing early this year in my back yard!

By the way, in case you were wondering the answer is yes; I do all of my electrical wiring in iambic pentameter.