Organic chick starter versus medicated?

[Bravo]

I have always been the natural type and never used medicated starter until a month ago.

I had 2 brooders full of chicks come down with Cocci. They had NEVER been outside. It looks like what happened was that it was in the litter (who knows how that happened) and when a few chicks knocked over the water, combined with the heat of the brooder we had an instant cocci problem. I did have ACV in the water too.

I had to hand feed/water 1 chick every few hours for a week and constantly worry about the rest. Luckily I didn't lose any but the stress of the whole situation was far more than I EVER want to go through again.

Now my new protocol is to keep the chicks on medicated feed until 5 weeks old and gradually transistion them over to grower feed (non medicated) after that. By the time they are laying, there will be no remnants of the "medication" in their systems.

AlbionWood: I need to get organic starter/grower so the whole flock can eat it, laying hens and chicks alike. Otherwise I have to keep the new ones separate for 18 weeks!

You should ALWAYS keep younger and older birds separated until they are close in size. The older birds could peck and injure/kill the younger ones.​

 

[lindsmurphy]

You should ALWAYS keep younger and older birds separated until they are close in size. The older birds could peck and injure/kill the younger ones.

I don't agree at all with this statement. Yes, sometimes you could lose chicks to older birds, but you should know your flock's temperment. Keep in mind people that chickens of old did not have brooders and incubators. I think it's rediculous that people think they have to do everything for these birds. My birds are currently running with (3) 5 day olds and have been since they hatched under their mother out in the coop. I did not seperate her, and she made it known that anyone who dared to peck her babies would get it back ten fold. These babes are healthy happy and growing like weeds all under the watchful care of the hen and the roo.​

 

[Anianna]

There is a difficult to watch, but very educational video regarding the effect of Coccidiosis infection in chickens you can watch here. The medicated feed helps chicks survive their initial exposure to Cocci and build that natural immunity without such a high risk of the chicks succumbing to the infection.

 

[Pele]

Cocci is actually a bunch of little organisms that are pretty much everywhere that involve birds. They are found in the excrement, so if you are raising your chicks in an environment where they come into contact with their own waste, they have a chance to have the organisms get out of control and kill them.

You can combat this organically by raising them on wire-bottom cages so that this contact never happens, or you can just feed them medicated feed (which does not have msg, horomones, or other chickens in it, so it confuses me why people shun it). The problem with just doing the wire method is that once you put them outside, you're back to square one since they never built an immunity.

I personally raise chickens so that an animal doesn't have to suffer in order to feed me. Along that vein, I don't want to chance my babies suffering when I could have prevented it with little effort.

BUT there are many different beliefs out there, and each one is equally valid. Variety is the spice of life!

 

[Waddling_Wamplers]

We have had ours on medicated feed just to give their immune systems time to toughen up. The older ones are about to be 8 weeks old, and we are going to take them off this week. If they haven't built up immunities by now they never will. I hope this helps. Good luck!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Quote:
I assume you are talking about the medication being Amprolium and nothing else.

For some people there is a lot of benefit. For most of us, I think it is a waste. It does not harm the chicks, so if it makes you feel better, go ahead and use it. Just don't let your laying flock eat it and do not feed it to chicks that have been vaccinated against cocci.

I'll copy a write-up I recently did for another post that might help explain how I feel about it. I do not medicate unless I have a reason to medicate.


First you need to know what the "medicated" is in the medicated feed. It should be on the label. Usually it is Amprolium, Amprol, some such product, but until you read the label, you really don't know. I'll assume it is an Amprolium product, but if it is not, then realize everything I say about it may not apply. And it is possible that the "medicated" is Amprolium AND something else.

Amprol is not an antibiotic. It does not kill anything. It inhibits the protozoa that cause coccidiosis (often called cocci on this forum) from multiplying in the chicken's system. It does not prevent the protozoa from multiplying; it just slows that multiplication down. There are several different strains of protozoa that can cause cocci, some more severe than others. Chickens can develop an immunity to a specific strain of the protozoa, but that does not give them immunity to all protozoa that cause cocci. Little bitty tiny baby chicks can develop that immunity easier than older chickens.

It is not a big deal for the chicken’s intestines to contain some of the protozoa that cause cocci. The problem comes in when the number of those protozoa gets huge. The protozoa can multiply in the chicken’s intestines but also in wet manure. There is one strain of the protozoa that no matter how dry you keep the brooder and even if you feed medicated feed, your chicks can still get sick. But for almost all cases, if you keep the brooder dry, you will not have a problem.

To develop immunity to a specific strain, that protozoa needs to be in the chicks intestines for two or three weeks. The normal sequence is that a chick has the protozoa. It poops and some of the cysts that develop the protozoa come out in the poop. If the poop is slightly damp, those cysts develop and will then develop in the chick's intestines when the chicks eat that poop. This cycle needs go on for a few weeks so all chicks are exposed and they are exposed long enough to develop immunity. A couple of important points here. You do need to watch them to see if they are getting sick. And the key is to keep the brooder dry yet allow some of the poop to stay damp. Not soaking wet, just barely damp. Wet poop can lead to serious problems.

What sometimes happens is that people keep chicks in a brooder and feed them medicated feed while they are in the brooder. Those chicks are never exposed to the cocci protozoa that lives in the dirt in their run, so they never develop the immunity to it. Then, they are switched to non-medicated feed and put on the ground where they are for the first time exposed to the protozoa. They do not have immunity, they do not have the protection of the medicated feed, so they get sick. Feeding medicated feed while in the brooder was a complete waste.

I do not feed medicated feed. I keep the brooder dry to not allow the protozoa to breed uncontrollably. The third day that they are in the brooder, I take a scoop of dirt from the run and feed it to them so I can introduce the protozoa and they can develop the immunity they need to the strain they need to develop an immunity to. To provide a place for that slightly damp poop, I keep a square of plywood in the dry brooder and let the poop build up on that. I don't lose chicks to cocci when they hit the ground.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeding medicated feed to chicks, whether the protozoa are present or not. It will not hurt them. They can still develop the immunity they need. But unless the protozoa are present, it also does no good.

Now, two warnings on the medicated feed, assuming it is an Amprolium product. Do not feed it to laying hens. You should not eat the eggs from hens that are eating this product.

If you get your chicks vaccinated for cocci, do not feed medicated feed. It can negate the vaccinations.

 

[JoePa]

Quote:
Pele - you mentioned that you raise your chicks on wire-bottom cages - I posted a question a week or so ago about raising chickens on a wire floor but was told not to because they can get bomblefoot - I orginally thought that building a run with a wire floor a foot or so off the ground would make it easy to clean the poop off the ground - I'm a little confused about using a wire floor in a run - I was thinking of hardware cloth - any thoughts - anyone

 

[Pele]

Quote:
Pele - you mentioned that you raise your chicks on wire-bottom cages - I posted a question a week or so ago about raising chickens on a wire floor but was told not to because they can get bomblefoot - I orginally thought that building a run with a wire floor a foot or so off the ground would make it easy to clean the poop off the ground - I'm a little confused about using a wire floor in a run - I was thinking of hardware cloth - any thoughts - anyone

Good question! I personally thought about having wire bottoms on my run too, but I decided that since the silly chickens run about on the ground outside anyway, there wasn't a heck of a lot of point beyond guarding against digging predators.

I can see where there would be a higher chance for bumblefoot if the wire wasn't washed off occasionally, as they'd be standing in caked-on waste. Ultimately that's why I decided to just have a sand floor with straw on top. That way they can dustbathe and sit on comfy clean straw all in one place.

The brooder is a bit different. It's on a small scale, which is much easier to clean. Also, the kiddies only stay there for 5 weeks max, so caked-on waste is easier to manage and prevent. There's no issue in their comfort really because they have little dinosaur feet, and wire never bothers them.

I feed medicated all throughout their brooding because you never know how much cocci were exposed to in the hatchery before you got them. Once they're ready to go outside, they need to stay in a seperate cage/run in sight of the other hens anyway to socialize them, so I use that week to two weeks to continue medicated feed. Once that's done, they're both socialized to the flock, and their immunity is supplimented. And out they go!