Lights on all night in sheds.

We'd leave them on at calving, apart from that it is off.

I'd say the period of darkness would probably benefit them more than 24/7 light.

My calving camera has IR so I can see everything early with it at night. Those that don't might keep a light on for their cameras. @emaherx had a neat setup where he could turn the lights on and off in the shed using his phone.

I have a 10 w LED floodlight in each the sheds for this purpose, hooked up to a photocell. Turns on when dark and off in the morning at current ESB prices costing under 5c a night for each light. Find it handy as stock have a low level of light to move around.

Read somewhere that it can increase feed intake have a light at night, and this weight gain. Haven't got around to doing an on experiment this🤔🤔

Just think of early summer and the weight gain that cattle do. Long days and loads of feed in front of them.

When the ESB prices rose I did a quick back of the fag box calculation, it's cost of less than €25 euro for the whole winter. I decided to run the scrapers once turn less during the day and maximize the use of night rate for them.

I thought I read somewhere it was a regulation they had to be given a certain amount of time in darkness

Could be imagining things or it may be another country etc

Like that, I'm ignorant of the facts etc but I'd imagine they evolved to have a day-night cycle so let them have it....

Are many people applying for the scheme for grant for esb if ur esb gone up more than 50 percent in the year

I've one of these connected to shed lights and electric fence unit:

But if I were buying today I'd go with one of these:

The shelly is a lot more expensive, but has wire wired network and support more open standards for integrating with other systems.

I can control the lights with a phone app or anything with a web browser. Both devices have their own Apps but I use Home Assistant to control them as I can integrate the light controls with the camera feeds. I can also use it for monitoring some sensors around the farm like electric fences, liquid levels, solar pumps, temperatures etc. Also working on adding some livestock health monitoring into it too.

I'm in the middle of replacing some lights at the moment so not as well lit up as it should be. Dark Pens are empty and IR Leds gone completely on older cameras.

Also useful to set timers, can set how long lights will stay on after switching on or how long fences stay off in case I forget them.

Can u get one the plug is plugged into

😁 Possibly just a messer............

But I live over 2 KM from yard and was working away until last year, so it's nice to have a good view of what's going on.

For more of emaherx's genius ideas I'd refer to the tinkering thread they made a couple of years ago, some very interesting stuff in it.