I also have a Polish hen right now who is suffering from a case of respiratory ickies, along with a swollen shut left eye! Maybe we'll have to come up with a new name for this particular creeping crud... I think what is happening is a respiratory infection--a cold, basically--that is affecting the sinuses and eyes. About the only thing you can do is treat it with an antibiotic, which of course has no effect on the virus itself but DOES treat any secondary bacterial infection. You just have to allow the virus to run it's course. My vet also gave me eye drops of Genetian Violet for my bird, which we have been giving her for the last 3 days. It's too soon to tell if they'll help, but at least she isn't worse. My birds' symptoms match yours, by the way. Earlier this year I had one little Frizzle hen who was so bad you could SEE the swelling of her poor little head. She recovered and is just fine though, so I have hopes that the Polish will also be OK. If you can't get a prescription eye drop from the vet, about all you can do is keep the eye and surrounding area clean. You can use sterile, unpreserved saline solution (which can be hard to find, most have preservatives in them), which is sold in grocery stores in the contact lens supply area. What strength is your Tetracycline? You should be able to either contact the manufacturer (do they have a website?) or call your local friendly vet and ask him. You also need to make sure that each sick bird is getting the correct amount each day--and sick birds tend to stop eating and drinking. You may have to dose each one with medicated water. Also check your feed, make sure it isn't wet or moldy--guard against Aspergillotis. Other than that, I'd suggest maybe offering your birds some unflavored Pedialyte instead of water to boost their electrolytes, and maybe some goodies to tempt them to eat and keep their strength up. Mealworms, scrambled eggs, corn on the cob, cooked spaghetti, etc. Good luck! Velvet ~:>

Lermer is correct. Even a quick google search will reveal hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on blue light's effect on plants. It's no myth at all. Here's a random example. They took Scots pine seedlings and put them in plexiglass containers, one designed to remove blue light and the other completely clear. I.e., the ones missing blue light got less total light to them; however, they grew *longer* than the ones in the fully transparent plexiglass. I could point to countless more examples of this phenomenon. Blue = stocky and leafy. Red = spindly, encourages fruiting. Right now Southern California Edison is subsidizing the cost of a plain jane looking four foot fluorescent light fixtures so they sell for $1.99 each. Purchase cost isn't the only consideration. Power is generally a bigger cost than upfront costs. Think about drawing 450W for a HID on an 18/6 day/night cycle year-round -- that's 3,000kWh, or $325 a year at average electricity rates. That's no chump change. :P so I decided to try some 225 mixed LED's for some seedlings as I have read about some success with this 14 watt setup, unfortunately the results were less than spectacular, albeit the plants did grow, and did not stretch I still got 2x the growth from the Fluoro in half the time. I cannot comment to the scientific explanation, but It appears that 14 watt LED over 1sq foot is not enough power to really drive growth, Well, obviously ;) LEDs are nice, but they're not magical. The sun on a clear day puts down about 93 watts per square foot (times the sine of the angle to the sun -- if it's straight overhead, times 1.0). Even if your LEDs were 100% efficient, which they're not (for blue, probably a quantum efficiency in the 40%s) that'd still be 15% of the energy of sun shining directly overhead. In practice, factoring into account inefficiencies and light straying from where you intended to illuminate, you're probably getting under 5% of the light of the sun. Now, you get to pick your ideal frequencies, (the graph at the bottom is what you want to look at). But that isn't nearly enough of a boost to compensate for how little light you're putting out. If you want to drive growth, you don't need to double your light; you should at least 4x it. And be sure to minimize any stray light that you can :) Also, as the plants get bigger, penetration will become an issue. LEDs are effectively point light sources; there's nearly no penumbra. The more reflections you can get and the deeper the LEDs are into the canopy (and the more they move, if that's an option), the better your results will be. I'm about to try an experiment with dangling LED christmas lights through my planters to see how they like that.

Is there a way to put out cat food that the chippies won’t get into? Maybe you could attract a cat. Or…….Try contacting Tree House, 312-477-3983. I believe they have a ”working cat program that could fit your needs. working cats are cats that are used to being outside and work in shops, barns, large storage facilities, anywhere rodent control is needed. The trade off would be food, water and a warm place to sleep in inclimate weather. debra

Nothing in the picture looks dead. The branch you circled has live growth coming out on the right. Leave it alone and see what developes.