Couple questions - food and other

[catsew]

Ok, so I have 2 roosters and a younger female. Obviously I can't keep them all together and am not building another coop and don't really have a way to keep them all. So one of the roosters is going to be dinner (unless I can find a good home, but if someone else is going to eat it, it may as well be me). SO my question is, way back when we were planning on getting them the lady at the feed store said you didn't want to feed medicated starter if you were going to eat them.
They are 12 weeks today and have been on medicated starter since the beginning. Can you still eat them?

And this kinda goes hand in hand, our TSC only has chick stuff during spring chick season, so I have about 1/4 bag of medicated starter left. I only have the 1 baby still, so I know I have plenty for that one, but is it ok to switch the food of the older birds yet? And what kind should I get? Its just the 2 roosters so I don't need to worry about egg laying quality food or anything.

Thanks. I hope that makes sense.

 

[Wildflower_VA]

The 'medication' is just to help them slowly build up a tolerance/resistance to the coccidial protozoa that is present in all soil, so I don't see how it would affect the meat. If they have been outside on the ground for several weeks, they already do have resistance, and have been exposed to the actual protozoa in your soil, so they don't need medicated feed, anyway. Actually, they never did. I have raised over 40 chicks this season with no medicated feed and have had zero problems. I just brought some of my garden dirt into the brooder so they could slowly be exposed to the same protozoa that is in the soil that they will be living on when they go outside.

Think about it: would you put something into your chickens that made them unfit to eat??? I would switch feed to non-medicated broiler/grower feed as soon as you finish the quarter bag, and not worry about your eggs or eating the roo. At 12 weeks, the roo has several weeks to go before he will be big enough to eat.

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

I agree, you don't need the medicated feed, just switch em over to scratch gradually, introduce a little at a time, I don't think there's a problem feeding the rest of your feed, why waste it? Course I'm no expert, but it's not rocket science is it? Oh sorry, it probably is at least science to the one who's formulatig the feed for those huge commercial growers...personally I have a 'thing' about unnessary antibiotics, and the people who push them, its why we have resistant microbes now. Nautural immunity is best, I just dumped a cup of dirt in the new chicks coop yesterday.

 

[catsew]

Thank you.
I guess I never realized the background to why they even needed the medicated feed. For our family personally we stay away from all antibiotics, so it wouldn't make sense to give it to them. Since this is our first time having them and we wanted to make sure they would be ok, we did medicated just in case. I will probably not do it again then.
At the beginning we didn't know if they roosters or hens, but now that we know we have harder decisions to make.

 

[Achickenwrangler#1]

Don't worry about the 'harder' decisions now, they get easier as the roosters become a bigger pia later, makes it easier