Medicated feed after 6 weeks

[In2Ice]

I am switching from starter mash to grower crumbles and was told that at this stage the medicated feed is no longer neccesary. What are your thoughts about this. I just want to make sure the chickens are protected if need be but don't want to over medicate if it isn't neccesary
Thanks

 

[Vamvakas]

I try stop feeding medicated crumbles 1-1.5 months and feed the chicks cracked corn, if you don't teach your chicks young to eat corn chances are they wont eat it when they get older.

 

[berniezahm]

Cracked corn is only about 8 % protine. Growing chicks need closer to 20 %. Crumble Starter Grower comes both medicated and nonmedicated. I use nonmedicated from day one. Any chicken that scratches the ground and looks to see what it has uncovered that might be good to eat, will eat cracked corn even if it's two years old before it sees it the first time. Chickens are to curious to not try eating anything that remotely looks like food. The chicks probably don't really need medicated feed at 6 weeks of age, especially if they have been getting it since hatching. Some pepole advocate giving chicks that age a clump of grass to scratch and peck through. They claim that gives the chick all of the probiotics and other digestive organisams they need to develope a good immune system.

 

[gryeyes]

What matters most is that the chicks have been exposed to the world while still consuming the medicated feed for about a month. The medicated feed helps them build resistance to cocci and if they haven't been exposed, the medicated feed doesn't do them any good. I usually feed them the medicated feed until they are 8 weeks old given that they have been put out into a grow-out pen around the age of 5 weeks.

Once I forgot the reason for the feed and stopped feeding it at 8 weeks, just like always, but I was keeping them in a ginormous brooder in the shed longer than that; they were 10 weeks old when I finally got their grow out coop and pen set up. By then they had been on regular feed for two weeks..... and I lost about 10 of them in a cocci outbreak. It had been raining and the soil was very wet and muddy, perfect environment for cocci to flourish. My adult birds were resistant, but the youngsters weren't.

Just sayin'.....