Denagard Dosage

[davepinkham]

Hello all! It's my first post, though I've been reading the forums for a year and half now.

I'm creating this thread because we've been using Denagard for our flock at the dosage I've seen recommended here several times: 16 ml/gallon treatment, 8 ml/gallon preventative dosage. It has definitely worked, though we've had difficulty keeping our birds water consumption up with the horrid tasting Denagard. Sugar and juice concentrates abound!

This led me to do further research on the dosage and I found the Novartis "non-US" site which gives the amount 2 ml/liter treatment and 1 ml/liter preventative. By my math (with the help of Google), 1 gallon equals ~3.79 liters. That should be 3.79 ml/gallon preventative and 7.58 ml/gallon treatment, or rounding up, 4 & 8 ml respectively.

That is half what is frequently recommended! Am I making a glaring error here? That would explain why it tastes so bad.
Please chime in!

Here's the link:
http://www.ah.novartis.com/products/en/denagard_12sol_poultry.shtml

Dave

 

[Sydney Acres]

No, Denagard is an antibiotic. There are still many antibiotics that you don't need a prescription to use in livestock. Just go to your local feed store and you'll find not only Denagard but also chlortetracycline, penicillin, oxytetracycline, sulfadimethoxine, sulfamethazine, and tylosin, to name a few. (In CA specifically, some of these listed require a prescription, but not in other states.) All antibiotics are antimicrobials, although not all antimicrobials are antibiotics.

Preventative treatment is not used 100% of the time for antibiotics. Using this 100% of the time would also select for antibiotic resistance, and would make the medication less effective or possibly even useless for treatment if symptoms became severe. Chronic use of antibiotics at low doses for prevention, or repeatedly short durations, are specifically the reasons that so many antibiotics that had been available OTC and now prescription-only meds. Their misuse has caused significant problems.

 

[TheWineMaker]

I use denagard at 2ml per liter theres 3.75 liters per gallon so it comes out to about 7.5ml to 1 gallon. Viovet.com has this posted .

 

[cree57i]

I got some rare breed chicks that developed severe respiratory symptoms within the first days of having them. Right or wrong, I gave them denegard at the 8 cc/gallon rate and mixed all their food into a denegard mash too. Within the 5 days treatment suggested, they made a full recovery. I used a syringe to measure the dosage of the cc's or ml's (which are the same thing). I find that to be much more accurate than a tsp. and actually convert from tsp/Tablespoons to ml's/cc's for better accuracy.

I love this stuff. I think it potentiates with any of the cylines and not just tetracycline. I wish I had discovered it sooner.

 

[Sydney Acres]

There are published doses for once daily oral dosing. However, there are several people who have posted that this medication is quite irritating if not diluted, so I would be reluctant to give it all in one single daily dose. I would probably divide it into 3 separate doses, and mix each dose into a full tube-feeding meal. That should dilute it out enough to not be irritating to the crop. It would be essential to mix it in thoroughly. You'd be using a very small volume of liquid, and you don't want it improperly mixed, and possibly the tiny volume of necessary medication stuck to the wall of the tube, or retained in the tube as you remove it.

One of the oral doses specific for "adult poultry" is 30 mg/kg per day for 7 days. So if you're tube feeding, you could mix 10 mg/kg into 3 different tube feedings per day, which would bring your total daily dose to 30 mg/kg..

To figure out how much to use, weigh the bird first. Most people in the U.S. will weigh in pounds. Convert the weight to kg.

Pounds divided by 2.2 = kg (Examples: 5 pounds divided by 2.2 = 2.27 kg. One pound divided by 2.2 = 0.454 kg)

Second, determine how many mg of medicine you need by multiplying the dosage for each feeding (10 mg/kg) by the kg weight of the bird
(Examples: 10 mg/kg X 2.27 kg = 22.7 mg 10 mg/kg X 0.454 kg = 4.54 mg)

Third, determine how many ml you need by dividing the number of mg by the concentration of the medicine (Denagard is 12.5%, which is 125 mg/ml). (Examples: 22.7 mg divided by 125 mg/ml = 0.18 ml 4.54 mg divided by 125 mg/ml = 0.036 ml)

So, if you're using the dose of 30 mg/kg/day and you divide it up into 3 separate feedings, the dose per feeding for various weights would be:

3 lbs divided by 2.2 lbs/kg = 1.36 kg X 10 mg/kg = 13.6 mg divided by 125 mg/ml = 0.11 ml
4 lbs divided by 2.2 lbs/kg = 1.82 kg X 10 mg/kg = 18.2 mg divided by 125 mg/ml = 0.15 ml
5 lbs divided by 2.2 lbs/kg = 2.27 kg X 10 mg/kg = 22.7 mg divided by 125 mg/ml = 0.18 ml
6 lbs divided by 2.2 lbs/kg = 2.73 kg X 10 mg/kg = 27.3 mg divided by 125 mg/ml = 0.22 ml
7 lbs divided by 2.2 lbs/kg = 3.18 kg X 10 mg/kg = 31.8 mg divided by 125 mg/ml = 0.25 ml
8 lbs divided by 2.2 lbs/kg = 3.64 kg X 10 mg/kg = 36.4 mg divided by 125 mg/ml = 0.29 ml
9 lbs divided by 2.2 lbs/kg = 4.09 kg X 10 mg/kg = 40.9 mg divided by 125 mg/ml = 0.33 ml
Etc, etc, with the final dose in ml mixed thoroughly with the tube feeding slurry


There are several other published doses for direct oral use, varying between 25-50 mg/kg. To use a different dose, simply chose the dose you want, divide it by the 3 feedings, and substitute that dose into the equation instead of the 10 mg/kg in the above examples. For instance, if you wanted to use a maximum daily dose of 50 mg/kg, and you had a 7 pound bird:

50 mg/kg/day divided by 3 feedings per day = 16.67 mg/kg

7 lbs divided by 2.2 lbs/kg = 3.18 kg X 16.67 mg/kg = 53.0 mg divided by 125 mg/ml = 0.42 ml, mixed thoroughly into tube feeding slurry

(For those of you who use a calculator and get a very slightly different result, that is because I've done each step separately for instructional purposes, and have rounded off each number in each step separately to the nearest tenth or hundredth place. A calculator won't do that for you. So if you do the equations all in a line with a calculator that reads out 6 digits after the decimal place, you may end up with a final ml that is a few hundredth off my calculations. Not a big deal, as you aren't going to be measuring to that level of accuracy anyway.)

If math is overwhelming for you, just use a calculator and take it one step at a time, referring to the examples so that you know that you're doing each step properly. Be sure that your final ml dose comes out in the right ballpark. That's the most important thing. If you're a few hundredths of a ml off in your calculation, no big deal. If you're 10 or 100 times off in your calculations, then you could have a serious overdose.

 

[seminolewind]

Chickens:

• Prevention of chronic respiratory disease (CRD) and air sacculitis: 12.5 mg tiamulin hydrogen fumarate / kg bodyweight
• Treatment of chronic respiratory disease (CRD) and air sacculitis: 25 mg tiamulin hydrogen fumarate / kg bodyweight

Turkeys:

• Prevention of infectious sinusitis and air sacculitis: 12.5 mg tiamulin hydrogen fumarate / kg bodyweight
• Treatment of infectious sinusitis and air sacculitis: 25 mg tiamulin hydrogen fumarate / kg bodyweight

Indications

Tiamulin (concentration in water in %)

Product
(in ml)

Water
(in liters)

Treatment
(in days)
Prevention CRD / air sacculitis / infectious sinusitis

0.0125

1

1

3 days (1st week of life); 1-2 days every 3-4 weeks
Treatment CRD / air sacculitis / infectious sinusitis

0.025

2

1

3 – 5


Sounds like 1 ml of product per liter for prevention, and 2ml of product per liter for treatment. So it sounds like you're right.

 

[deeszoo]

I got some Denagard from Twin City Poultry Supplies to try. They have a smaller that you can get if you don't want to commit to the larger more expensive bottle. The bottle came with dosing instructions for small flocks. Preventative: 1.5 teaspoon per gallon of water. Treatment: 3 teaspoon per gallon of water.

Also, I think it was mentioned that you can add a cycline type antibiotic and they will help support each other when you have acute illness.

I have had great success using this so far. I use it as a preventative when I bring in new birds. I think that it helps them through the stress of being exposed to new germs. Seems to work very well with chicks, also.

 

[casportpony]

 
I got some Denagard from Twin City Poultry Supplies to try.  They have a smaller that you can get if you don't want to commit to the larger more expensive bottle.  The bottle came with dosing instructions for small flocks.  Preventative:  1.5 teaspoon per gallon of water.  Treatment:  3 teaspoon per gallon of water.  

Also, I think it was mentioned that you can add a cycline type antibiotic and they will help support each other when you have acute illness.  

I have had great success using this so far.  I use it as a preventative when I bring in new birds.  I think that it helps them through the stress of being exposed to new germs.  Seems to work very well with chicks, also.  

This is so interesting - I don't think it is cleared by the USDA for use in Poultry.  does your package mention poultry?  



Daily the water must be poured out and replaced with a fresh mix - if anyone reading this doesn't realize.

Many websites, including the one mentioned, sell products for poultry that aren't approved for use in poultry, some are even banned (Baytril, Cipro, metronidazole). It's up to us to do our homework and decide if it's worth using such drugs. We should also verify dosing info from places like Twin City as often the directions listed are *not* correct.

-Kathy

 

[ChicKat]

If I have read the above correctly, I think the treatment when using the 12.5% solution is 2ml per liter and preventative is 1ml per liter, which is a little less than 8ml per gallon and 4ml per gallon.

-Kathy

Here is the link to the sales info in UK -
http://www.thepoultrysite.com/focus/contents/novartis/novartis_poultry1.pdf

it says:
The dosage for chickens and turkeys is 25 mg tiamulin/kg bodyweight or 100mls of Denagard 12.5% Oral Solution for 500 kgs of bird. Denagard should be administered continuously in the drinking water at a level of 0.025% (250ppm) for 3-5 days to chickens and 5 days to turkey

ETA - I did speak with a very qualified vet about using the product. One reason it isn't 'approved' in the USA is that to FDA trials/tests cost hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars. Also want to add - I appreciate the info that you provide -- I see your postings a lot on BYC.

 

[casportpony]

I have read this entire thread and, unless I missed it, all recommended dosages are in ml, liters, etc.  

Most of us in the US use tsp or TBLS per Gallon.  Why is it so difficult to put that in these posts?  

On a side note, yes, I always have to refer to conversion charts and one of these days, I will write it on my bottle of Denagard.  ROFL

I wish that people in the US would start using ml instead of teaspoon and tablespoon.

-Kathy