My question to you is why are you giving an antibiotic to a healthy flock? Giving antibiotics as a preventative is not in general a good idea. People do it, especially in commercial settings where birds are wallowing in their own feces, packed into small cages and sheds together- and are very likely to get ill if not on preventative antibiotics-- but if you have a healthy flock in a relatively clean environment- why use an off label antibiotic at all? The medication looks like a nice choice for certain diseases- but why treat unless you have a problem? How are you going to come up with a dosing plan, if they are not sick? There are preventative medications used in certain instances like amprollium in medicated feed for chicks going into contaminated areas- I use this myself, but for Denagard, it appears to be a good choice for mycoplasma (CRD)- so maybe I can rationalize using this as a preventative if I plan to bring in infected birds, but then again- I would probably not bring in infected birds.
Please excuse my rant, but it is a peeve of mine that antibiotics are used so often by people when they don't know what the problem is (bacterial, fungal, viral, parasitic, ect)- and many antibiotics are used inappropriately even when the problem IS a bacteria. Then I see this question about using an antibiotic in an apparently healthy flock... forgive me, I can't help it!
