Abstract
An experiment was conducted with White Leghorn adult hens to determine the effect of the length of continuous light periods on the diurnal changes in feeding activity of caged layers.Daily feed intake tended to decrease in birds which received beyond 18 hours of continuous light daily as compared with that in birds receiving a shorter period of light, while the time spent eating during a day increased as the hours of light increased. The rate of eating as expressed in the amount of feed eaten per unit of time spent eating decreased proportionately with increasing hours of light.When the birds received beyond 18 hours of light daily, there was a trend for the diurnal variation in feeding activity from time to time to be greater, whereas, when the birds received 12 and 15 hours of light daily, the activity was found to be distributed uniformly throughout the light period, excepting a few hours in the early morning.Although the length of photoperiod had a consistent effect on the diurnal pattern of feeding during the light period, it is unlikely that prolonged period of continuous light beyond 15 hours daily are essentially related to the facilitation of the feeding activity of laying hens.
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