Days shortening.

[Murray]

It is heading to winter in the southern hemisphere.
I get up at 6 am, make a cup of coffee and jump on the forum to catch up on the news. Such as it is.
At 6.30 I turn the outside lights on, because it is still pretty much dark. At 6.45 I turn on the lights in the shed and clean out and feed the birds.
I leave the lights on until I leave for work at 7.45, by when it is well daylight.
This is the thing.
I am waking them up early, because I have to. But the last few days they have been keen to go away in the afternoon. I work on putting them away at 6 pm in the summer.
Today they were nearly all back in the loft and looking for their dinner at 5.30. Without being called, they were milling around looking ready for the feed. I wonder if messing around with their body clocks is really such a good thing?
They should be waking up and getting fed about 7.30 am. By using the lights I am pushing it forward an hour. Some people recommend it, as it holds them up in the moult. A waste of time, as far as I can see. Yep, they have the light at the same time every morning. But they just want to go to the perch earlier at the other end of the day. It is broad daylight, and they are fed and settling down.
If It holds them up from dropping flights now, they have to drop them latter.
You cannot beat nature.

[Andy]

Obviously we are now going the opposite way. The days are lengthening. I am letting the birds out at 7.15am, could be earlier if I was up lol, and they are then left on open loft. I clean and feed them at 8.30 before opening the shop. Then now after work they are still out, unless Roxanna has given them some sunflower hearts then she shuts them up lol. I then feed them again before shutting them up for the night.
I don’t use lights in the loft I just work around the hours of daylight. I personally feel that there is little to gain long term in having artificial day light hours. I know I am lucky in as much as we live above our shop and so no travelling to work and I can pop up and down when I want to a degree.

[Trev]

As Andy says we are heading in opposite directions with our days getting longer, at this time of year my birds are fed at 7am and the loft is opened before I go to work. Usually I get home between half 4 and 5 with the birds being fed around half 5 and the loft is shut up. In a couple of weeks I'll start leave the loft open after the evening feed and the birds can stay out until dark, there are some days during the summer when I am later getting home and the birds have to wait for their evening feed.
I don't have lights either so in the winter months the birds are only fed once a day, it is usually dark when I feed them so I just put enough food down for the day before going to work and the birds can get up and feed when they feel like it, the birds are usually shut in during the week and only let out weekends.