Medicated vs. Unmedicated

[Pampered chicken girl]

Last time I raised chicks I used manna pro medicated chick starter. This time I am more experienced and am thinking whether or not to use medicated feed. What do you use or prefer? Why do you use one or the other? What are the risks and pros with either one?
Thank,
Me and future chicks

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I start them on unmedicated and switch to medicated when they start going outside

 

[Pampered chicken girl]

I start them on unmedicated and switch to medicated when they start going outside

Good idea

 

[3KillerBs]

Since I brood outdoors I start them on medicated feed until they've been in the main coop for a week or so then switch them to all flock like the rest of the chickens.

 

[Shadrach]

Last time I raised chicks I used manna pro medicated chick starter. This time I am more experienced and am thinking whether or not to use medicated feed. What do you use or prefer? Why do you use one or the other? What are the risks and pros with either one?
Thank,
Me and future chicks

For the past ten years or so I've given medicated feed to chicks and mother. Most were fed outside in a free range keeping arrangement. Other chickens like chick feed it seems. Initially I tried my utmost to keep all but the mum and chicks away from the feed but quite a few would still get a few beakfulls before I realised. Nobody got ill.
I started feeding medicated feed after my first year in Catalonia when the incubator went in the rubbish and broodies sat and hatched in coops. What had been happening for some time before I arrived was chicks were incubated and then reared in a cage with heat and once feathered, were put out to free range with the others. The chicks died like flies apparently. I knew they were dying from coccidiosis. They had built up zero resistance.

I don't think I could have made the changes from incubator to free range sitting and hatching without medicated feed.
I've used it ever since, so thats a decade, and I have yet to see any sign that there is any long term harm and later chicks thrived.

 

[Pampered chicken girl]

Sorry About your chicks @Shadrach . Thanks for the advice everyone but just a note I only brood inside till about 5-6 weeks (depends on the chicks) then i move them to a grow out coop till 18-20 weeks. Also I have had a coccidiosis outbreak with some 10 week Olds but it's gone now. Has everyone tried what @BlindLemonChicken said that seems like it would work right, since they no cocci in my bathtub ( where I brood ) but there is of course outside

 

[U_Stormcrow]

The feed I get from the local mill is mostly medicated. Actually, the Grower that I normally get is almost always medicated - until this time. The layer feed I use in my mix is often medicated as well.

So I feed medicated because its what's available to me. Do I *need* medicated? No.

But there is no harm in it, and the alternative is spending $10+ in gasoline to buy 50# bags of Purina Flock Raiser at $0.48/lb instead of mixing feed from the local mill at a cost closer to $0.29/lb (and a much shorter drive, maybe $1.50 in gas)

/edit to add, if I had a prior coccidia outbreak on my grounds, Medicated would be much more important to me. But I have a closed flock on virgin ground - no outside birds in almost two years, and I'm hatching what I raise. That makes my risk profile somewhat smaller than that of many others.

 

[Tami2]

Good idea

What are you medicating them for or against? And does it work? I mean, they won't build up a tolerance for the medicated & then it won't work when/if needed?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

What are you medicating them for or against? And does it work? I mean, they won't build up a tolerance for the medicated & then it won't work when/if needed?

In the US, "Medicated" chicken feed usually means Amprolium, which is a thiamine antagonist. It disrupt's coccidia's ability to thrive. Think of it like red tide in a chickens gut. Only instead of dinoflagellates always present in the seawater which, when conditions are just right, bloom into massive colonies whose toxins are bad for every living thing nearby; instead its coccidia in a chicken's digestive tract that, when conditions are just right, bloom into a huge colony which is very bad for the host chicken.

Amprolium's operation is really basic, chemically, and coccidia largely have not developed resistance to it, though its been used for decades. There are broad spectrum, and with more chemically complicated means of operation, anti-microbial medications to which coccidia HAVE developed broad resistance - in shorter time frames.

/edit and Amprolium can be rendered functionally ineffective, unknowingly, by people trying to do the "right thing" by giving vitamin supppliments to their coccidia-sick birds. While Aprolium disrupt's coccidia's ability to uptake thiamine, if your greatly increase the thiamine in their environment, its effects can be overcome.

 

[3KillerBs]

I only brood inside till about 5-6 weeks (depends on the chicks)

I'm sorry, I've forgotten what breeds you keep and where you live. Do you have particularly fragile birds and a harsh climate?

I'm fortunate that my chicks have mainly be fast-maturing breeds who feathered out early (brooding outdoors helps with that). There's only one batch that wasn't in the integration pen before 5 weeks -- when I had a couple Langshan cockerels who were slow-feathering and looked seriously naked at 4 weeks when I wanted to take the batch off heat.