Hubby bought the wrong food!

[Elgb1]

My husband went to get chick starter for our 19 weeks old chicks, they aren’t laying yet, and got medicated feed by mistake. I am not sure we have enough regular feed to get through the weekend. Can chick’s this old have medicated? Should I mix it with regular to dilute the medicated? Or maybe give it to my 4 week old meat birds? Any suggestions would be awesome!

 

[rosemarythyme]

Presuming this is a feed with a coccidiostat you can feed it to the 19 week olds, not my preference but shouldn't hurt either.

I don't know if there's a recommended withdrawal at all for meat birds. Probably not, but I'm not knowledgeable on the specifics there.

 

[Brooks_]

Agrees with above. Most likely to be amprolium and safe for all ages.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

There is no withdrawal period, its fine, relax. If you've ever eaten supermarket eggs, there's good chance the birds were being fed amprolium as a coccidiastat at the time they laid them. The older that you are, the more likely the chance - and that's the premier choice in "medicated" feeds here in the US.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Follow up.

While trace amounts can be detected in the eggs of amprolium-fed birds (which is mostly a nod to the improvements in technology which allow detection of infinitismal quanties of a thing in a much larger vloume of something else), the amount is orders of magnitude below what it would take to impair thiamine intake in an average weight human. Even where they not, weeks-long deficiencies of thiamine can be readily corrected with a B-complex vitamin with no lasting effect.