feeding broilers...regarding medicated feeds.

[Cuban Longtails]

lol, that's sooo much better!

The FDA website has some fact sheets on various combinations of drugs in feed, but I haven't seen anything that defines amprolium as an antibiotic or not. The sheets do tell the acceptable levels of drug residue in the meat or eggs and tells what the drugs are for, i.e. growth, prevention of cocci, etc...

A scary story: My room mate picked up a bag of medicated feed once. We fed most of it out before I ever bothered to look at the tag. It was medicated turkey starter and had organic arsenic in it!

No harm done apparently because the chicks are still very alive, now being close to 3 months old.

 

[silkiechicken]

Yeah, so I googled up some terms and it seems there are a lot of definitions of antibiotic, depending if the definition is from a medical school, or a pharmaceutical company, etc. In the broadest sense, it is a drug that kills any microorganism (including fungi), which a protoza would be, thus amrpolium via that would indeed be an antibiotic.

One definition is that it is a product secreted by a microorganism that inhibits growth of other microrganims!
http://www.johnsondiversey.com/Cult...ossary+of+Terms/Bloodborne+Pathogens+Page.htm

However, it also seems in medical terms, it is a natural or synthetic compound used to treat bacteria...

Boy you gotta love definitions!

Oh, yeah, that paper, patandchickens got it right on it's basic idea.

LOL on the micro bio too, so many students go into it thinking that they get to see animals and stuff (zoology)... but really it's just the cell level of the animals and the tiny metabolism junks... try acronyms, welcome to the world of biochemistry... where the same acronym is used for darn half dozen things!!!

As for the feed with medicated or not, you really can go either way. I personally use medicated feeds in the spring if available, if it only contains amprolium, as even if it is an antibiotic in some definitions, I'd rather be safe than sorry, since I know there is cocci in the soil out here. Plus, in the spring, I have to brood inside for a few weeks, instead of brooding on soil from day one, which would give them exposure early on. The rapid introduction of rain and thus cocci is what got a flock of leghorns at the end of summer that I didn't raise on medicated feeds.