Can I put wormer in their feed instead of water?

[luvmybirdz]

I have 26 birds to worm. Hubby is working all the time and this is usually a family effort. It's quite a circus getting them all rounded, caught and treated. We treat w/safeguard for goats (by mouth). Can I just give the full dose for all the birds mixed in their feed in the morning? That would be so much easier! Also, I see mixed info on egg withdraw. Not sure how long is necessary. TIA

 

[boothin]

Is there a reason you want to put it n their feed instead of their water?

 

[luvmybirdz]

Well, several reasons. My birds roam my yard and have multiple water buckets they share w/the ducks and goats. I know the meds wouldn't hurt any of these. You just have no way of knowing how much the birds actually got. Being free range they find other places to drink from too on occasion. The food they finish in the morning and I feel I can be more sure they will all get the right amount. They never finish their water either.

 

[boothin]

Well, similarly, you would have no way of knowing how much medicine they would get from their feed either. Since they free range one bird might forage more than another and eat less feed while another bird forages less and gets more feed. Either way, unless you are directly dosing them, it comes to what the chickens would eat or drink on average. It seems like the medicine would be much easier to mix into water than to try and get it to even semi uniformly mix into their feed. The dosing for safeguard is like 3 or 4 ml per gallon of water. Imagine mixing that tiny amount into a few pounds of food.

The dosing for mixing of water is based on how much water a chicken would drink on average, they don't have to drink it all, and the math works out. On average.

 

[luvmybirdz]

They get 1/2 ml by mouth (from my recollection) so I had planned to put that amount X my amount of birds, in their food. Seems odd to me that by mouth they'd get so much more than if by water, also.

 

[boothin]

4 ml in a gallon of water means 1 chicken has to drink 16oz of water to get a 1/2ml dose. The dose might sound really weak but watching how much our chickens drink, it seems about right. If you do mix 13ml of safeguard in their food, how will you keep it from just forming a big clump of medicated feed and actually get it to evenly distribute through their feed? It's not that it isn't possible, it just seems much harder to actually get them the right amount of medicine trying to mix tiny bits of liquid with a lot solids. You could mix it with some water in a spray bottle and spray it over their feed, but again, it would be getting to be more and more work.