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Forestfarm
In the Brooder
- Feb 26, 2024
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Interesting with the well water! Thanks for your insight!The environment makes such a big difference.
I've had so many batches of chicks the last few years that I took the opportunity to experiment. Late last year I became convinced that our well water was a source of cocci.
Given only bottled water, our chicks stayed healthy without amprolium. On well water, sometimes the prevention dose of amprolium wasn't enough.
How could this be? Some possibilities included:
* We happened to have ponds nearby. Although an ideal aquifier would be isolated from a surface level body of water, who can really say if that's the case, or if it stays the case as ground conditions change over time?
* A well could be more shallow than it's supposed to be, or have an infringing drain field or be contaminated by flooding. There's a right way for builders to take precautions, but things happen, people fib, etc.
At our new place on city water, and considering the winter season, I didn't give anything to our December chicks and they did just fine. That simply wasn't possible at the old place. It remains to be seen if spring and summer chicks do as well, but if they do I'm going to be completely convinced it was the well water. Since we are in the same city climate is the same, the flock is the same so the strain of cocci came along, and my sanitation practices remain the same.
But please note: There is a daily prevention dose and a treatment dose of corid. Prevention can be given continually until they've been on the ground 2-3 weeks. A treatment dose should only be given when they show symptoms and for a short duration, as it's a B1 (Thiamine) antagonist - it reduces the level of the vitamin which cocci needs to reproduce.
Because of this singular drawback to using amprolium, some people take a variety of approaches on dosing schedules in the hopes of giving them protection during the most risky times and "vacations" during less risk to balance out their vitamin levels.
How do you distinguish between the risky and less risky periods of their lives? I know a lot can go wrong in first and last couple weeks - are there other periods during the grow-out or do you mean the times when they are not on Corid?
Regarding vitamins, do people here like using a liquid vitamin / amino acid supplement like Rooster Booster poultry cell? Would it be administered when the birds go off Corid or during? I feel like I'm hijacking my own thread but it's all related