@perchie.girl trust me, don't give up being unique. You have such an amazing background. DH worked in electronics after he was discharged from the army and before deciding to become and eye doctor. He is quite good at it and actually has his R390A working....sorta. He keeps finding leaking capacitors on it. By the time he is done it is going to have all new capacitors, resistors and tubes in it. I went out today to buy feed and a few groceries and came home to find he had finally bought 25 replacement capacitors for it. I asked him if that was going to do the trick and he said no.
But it is fixable. In fact he had it going last night and was listening to a contest originating from Georgia Tech. A contest is where a station puts out a call to see how many responses they get and how far away their signal can reach.
I cleaned one of my coops today. Temp near 50, I opened the door on my 'big bird' coop this morning and the smell knocked me back three steps. The warmer weather sure brought out the stench. My eyes were watering. When I got home, I shoved the bachelors into their coop, caught the big birds and tossed them in the bachelor run and went to work. I had used pine chips and leaves in the coop and it was just plain nasty. The bitter cold temps just kept the composting at bay. The ammonia production also. I had to stop several times just to get away from the coop for a while and catch my breath.
I was able to get a hands on check of the birds though. They are really in surprisingly good condition, even the ones with Ocular Marek's are holding their weight and looking good. This time last year they were on deaths door...literally.
The only things I can suspect is that their immune systems like suggested, have learned to deal with the cruddy Marek's I've been dealing with or they were harboring a low grade infection that the low dose copper in the hog feed the Amish farmer suggested I try knocked it and is keeping it at bay.
Frankly, I don't care as long as they keep looking as good as they do. They are also starting to lay, sooner than they did last year as younger birds. Yay!