HELP!!!! Ducklings ate medicated chick food what do I do?????!!!!!!!!!

[BelovedBirds]

Don't panic. The medicated chick food will NOT hurt them.

I'm not sure why they are regurgitating. Perhaps too much food too quickly? Transition stress? But they are not poisoned.

See article below from BYC:

"
Amprolium and Other Coccidiostats

To start with, let's talk about the 'medication' found most often in medicated feed: Amprolium. When someone is referring to medicated feed, this is probably the type of feed they mean - feed meant for chicks that has medication in it to help prevent them from getting coccidiosis.

Amprolium is not actually a medication at all - rather it is a thiamine blocker. It works by starving the coccidia of the thiamine they need, thus killing it off. This also means that the birds eating it are getting less thiamine too, but generally it doesn't affect them negatively.

But is it safe for ducklings?

Yes, it is. While waterfowl in general are not as prone to coccidiosis as chickens and therefore don't need to be fed feed with amprolium, they can eat it with no ill effects. So while I wouldn't recommend you feed it to them if you have other options, if you don't have other options, feeding them feed medicated with amprolium won't hurt them.

In fact, amprolium is recommended to use on waterfowl in the rare cases when they do develop coccidiosis. At this link, you can see that amprolium is listed as a recommended treatment.

Due to the widespread nature of this myth, a study was performed to see if amprolium and other coccidiostats were harmful to ducklings. The study, which I linked above, found that they were not harmful. "No significant differences in mean body weight, mortality, and anatomical development were observed among the treatments."

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/feeding-ducklings-medicated-feed-the-myths-and-the-truth.74761/#:~:text=Due to the widespread nature,that they were not harmful.

I've heard this before and find it interesting-
I've heard that it isn't the "medication" itself that is harmful to ducklings, rather the fact that ducklings consume more of the feed than a chick would eat, and can "overdose" on it.
I'm not sure if this is true or not, just thought I'd say

 

[BigMacD]

We went to tractor supply today to get our ducklings we asked the lady if chick food was OK for ducklings she did say yes but I guess she didn’t know that it was the medicate chick food! Now the ducklings are throwing up and we really need help it’s their first day, what do I do?

I know this post is a little old. Do you have an update about what happened with the ducklings?