Medicated Feed vs. Growth of Chicks?

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

What will the OP do if the treated feed promotes a level of performance that is less than the control? In my situation, I would still use the treated feed even though it might slow growth a little yet significantly.

That's a good question for the OP. As for me and the chicks on our flock, I too will continue to provide starter feed containing Amprolium as a prophylactic.

 

[beneduck14]

Oh no. This is day 0 of incubation and I already screwed up. The temperature was alright this afternoon but I just checked and it was almost 106 F. Is this alright considering there were no significant development yet?!? If any of you know, please help me. I'm scrumaging through the internet but can't find anything

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Oh no. This is day 0 of incubation and I already screwed up. The temperature was alright this afternoon but I just checked and it was almost 106 F. Is this alright considering there were no significant development yet?!? If any of you know, please help me. I'm scrumaging through the internet but can't find anything

Why not just buy day old chicks? That will eliminate the uncertainty of incubation and shorten you experiment by 21 days.

 

[beneduck14]

Why not just buy day old chicks?  That will eliminate the uncertainty of incubation and shorten you experiment by 21 days.

I wish but I need chicks that come from the exact same environment, backround, and everything! It also is a little less expensive. My mother is a postal worker and she knows how the chicks get tossed around and die from that and temperatures especially around the holidays

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

I wish but I need chicks that come from the exact same environment, backround, and everything! It also is a little less expensive. My mother is a postal worker and she knows how the chicks get tossed around and die from that and temperatures especially around the holidays

I think you are overthinking that. For the experiments we conduct at my job we purchase day old chicks from a commercial hatchery. The chicks all come from the same hatching and have the same treatment. I could argue that your multiple hatching brings too much variability to your experiment and affected your results much more easily than asserting that there is variation in the chicks purchased from a commercial hatchery.

I'm afraid you will not have enough chicks from at home hatching. Ordering the day old chicks will remove the incubation variable from your experiment.

 

[centrarchid]

Experiments I do more often than not involve full-siblings with the same birth date. Sometimes multiple broods are used although considerable effort is made to make certain each brood is represented equally in each treatment. When we run the data we also take into account brood. Sometimes brood impacts results more than the treatment. I am not so particular about brood when the number of individuals per experiment is in the hundreds or more. I usually work with fish where having thousands of full-siblings is pretty easy to realize.

When experimental animals are outsourced from commercial suppliers, sometimes you run into issues where animals are in fact more variable than assumed. Variation can come in the form of genetics or simply how a given batch experiences incubation / early rearing. Both of those things can impact results as well.

 

[beneduck14]

I think you are overthinking that.  For the experiments we conduct at my job we purchase day old chicks from a commercial hatchery.  The chicks all come from the same hatching and have the same treatment.  I could argue that your multiple hatching brings too much variability to your experiment and affected your results much more easily than asserting that there is variation in the chicks purchased from a commercial hatchery.

I'm afraid you will not have enough chicks from at home hatching.  Ordering the day old chicks will remove the incubation variable from your experiment.

What do you mean by not enough chicks?

. Anyway it was an expensive option for me to partake in especially since I only need 20. I already started but I'll keep that in mind for other experiments I do!

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

What do you mean by not enough chicks?

. Anyway it was an expensive option for me to partake in especially since I only need 20. I already started but I'll keep that in mind for other experiments I do!

Our experiments on commercial feed additives sometime utilize 1,000 to 5,000 chicks with 48 to 64 replications and regularly don't find differences that are significant.

For your science fair project, 20 might suffice.

 

[centrarchid]

Our experiments on commercial feed additives sometime utilize 1,000 to 5,000 chicks with 48 to 64 replications and regularly don't find differences that are significant.

What do you mean by replicates? This is a point OP may not have worked out yet. Are talking 48 to 64 chicks, or are you talking a similar number of groups?

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

What do you mean by replicates? This is a point OP may not have worked out yet. Are talking 48 to 64 chicks, or are you talking a similar number of groups?

I mean 48 or 64 pens/groups of birds on the same treatment.