I agree that in zone 8 your chickens do not need the lamp for extra heat. Please do not leave the light on all night; chickens need their hours of darkness the same as we do. I can't tell you the one "right way" to use supplementary lighting, but I will tell you what I have found works for me. I like to start using my light on a timer around the first day of fall. The days and nights are equal at that point and I will increase their "day length" by adding about ten or fifteen minutes a week until I reach fourteen hours, at which point I adjust it only to maintain it. I add the light in the mornings and let them go to sleep naturally. Because I live in zone 5, I do use a heated pet dish for their water to keep it from freezing. In the event of a bitterly cold spell I occasionally attach the heat lamp to the same timer as the regular light. This gives them a bit of extra heat in the coldest hours without disturbing their day length, but it is an emergency measure only and I seldom consider it necessary.

Before too long in our neck of the woods,the deer "harvest" will begin. What a pretty way to say kill. At least call it what it is,whether you enjoy doing that or wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Good pictures,both of you. It's too bad something so beautiful can be such a pain in the patootie sometimes.

I'm up to 6 peeper dudes now, with four more eggs in the incubator, and a broody hen taking care of another three for 9 total. (never count the eggs before they hatch) Actually, I'm setting eggs specifically from one pair, so once a week, I start a new "mini-clutch". 21 days later, once they're out of the shells, dried and fluffed, I use 10 gallon aquariums for a brooder; they're easy to see (fun to watch), draft free, and just big enough for up to five chicks for about two weeks.

Tonight was Round Two. Arriving home from a shopping trip to Dallas, I went into the chicken coop to turn on the heat lamp to keep the keats warm overnight and there was a big old long chicken snake stretched out on the chicken roost. Of course, by the time I turned on the lamp and saw him or her, I was already past the snake and it was between me and the door, so I had to go back past the snake to exit the chicken coop. (sigh) Several "hysterical woman" phone calls later, two sets of neighbors arrived, gloves and guns in hand. (We have the world's most wonderful friends and neighbors.) One dragged that ugly old snake out of the chicken house, the other shot it, and peace and calm reigned again. I did call DH at work to tell him that his "snakeproof" chicken coop, as he has repeatedly described it since building it--most recently two days ago--is NOT snakeproof. (I wish it was.) I believe we will spend his days off attempting to do some more snakeproofing. The good news is that, for the second time in a week, a snake got into the building but not into the bird brooder cage, which DS apparently did an excellent job of snakeproofing. And, I hate to say that for fear I will jinx us and the next snake we see will be inside the cage eating keats. And, by the way, fresh, home-grown tomatoes are an excellent "thank you" to give a neighbor who comes running to rescue your keats from a big ol' bad ol' snake. I gave one neighbor a bagful and promised one to bring one to the other neighbor tomorrow after I pick tomatoes. Only six more weeks until the keats are theorectically large enough that a snake cannot crush them and eat them. Of course, it still will be a battle with the other predators, but the guineas usually can fight that battle on their own pretty well. Ada, my cousin's cat was picked up and carried away by a red-tailed hawk about 25 or 26 years ago....and then the hawk dropped the cat into a pasture and it made its own way home, a little scratched up and bloodied, but it survived. However, from what I recall, that cat pretty much stayed inside the house after that....and that cousin had a big snake problem as well, but with western diamondback rattlers.....I'd rather have the chicken snakes. Dawn P.S. If the neighbors hadn't come to our rescue, I guess Kristine and I would have shot it, but we would not have dragged it out of the chicken coop first, because we weren't going to touch it....and we didn't really want to blow a hole in the wall.