PLEASE HELP!

[HeatherMarieR]

I just moved my ducklings into a bigger cage. I just noticed that one of the Pekins that I got about a week ago can barely walk. I'm sure it's a niacin problem, but I've been adding 5-6 NaturVet Brewer's Dried Yeast Formula tablets to approximately each pound of food. The bottle says that each 500 mg tablet has 0.500 mg of Niacin. There are 6 ducklings. Should I be giving them more. Please help me. This is my first time raising ducks, and I really don't want to lose one of my babies. The one with the problem also has a pale pink bill while the other one has an orange bill.

 

[buff goose guy]

Ask @Amiga

 

[HeatherMarieR]

Here is a picture of the back of the bottle. I read up before I bought it and found others that were using the same or similar products.

 

[HeatherMarieR]

Ok, thanks! I will.

 

[Amiga]

Looking at the label - please check me on this - each tablet contains 0.5000 mg of niacin.

So if we were to want 100 mg of niacin in a gallon of water, that would be 200 tablets...

That does not sound like much. My unscientific estimates of the amount of niacin that would provide a duckling are this:

Two tablespoons of brewer's yeast contains 10 mg of niacin, based on this page http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/custom/1323569/2

The guesswork is in how much water a duckling actually ingests in a day. If a duckling actually drinks a half a cup of water a day, it would be getting (16 cups in a gallon, 32 half cups in a gallon . . . . 150 divided by 30, more or less) 5 mg of niacin from water with 150 mg niacin per gallon. Which would be about a tablespoon of brewer's yeast.
---------

So if we are aiming for 5 mg of niacin, that would be - per duckling - 10 tablets per day.

Someone check my arithmetic, but that's what it looks like to me.

 

[HeatherMarieR]

Math was never my subject lol, but I got your message and messaged you back. I'm definitely not giving them enough and I ordered a brewer's yeast power supplement a few minutes ago that should work much better.