What are the main methods of adding antibiotics in livestock and poultry breeding?

The addition of antibiotics to feed can not only prevent livestock and poultry diseases, but also improve livestock metabolism, promote livestock growth, and improve survival rate and feed conversion rate. However, due to the improper quantity, methods and methods of addition, it is easy to have some side effects, such as continuous use of pathogenic bacteria to produce drug resistance, residual antibiotics in livestock and poultry products bring harm to human health and so on. So, how to add antibiotics to the feed?

1. Distinguish different kinds of livestock and poultry. There are different requirements for antibiotics in different livestock and poultry species and different growth stages of the same livestock and poultry. For example, proper feeding of antibiotics before and after breeding and litter birth in pigs can increase the conception rate, litter size and weaning litter weight, while the effect of using antibiotics in piglets will decrease at the age of 8 to 10 weeks. Similarly, oxytetracycline inhibits the activity of rumen microorganisms in adult ruminants, but has a better effect on young livestock.

2. Mix well with the feed. When using antibiotics, you should first make a premix, and then mix it into the feed, so that it can be mixed well. It is strictly forbidden to mix pure antibiotics directly into the feed, which will often lead to livestock and poultry poisoning due to uneven mixing.

When adding antibiotics to the feed, we should also pay attention to the selection of special antibiotics for animals, use little or no common antibiotics, and change the type and dosage of antibiotics accordingly with the change of environmental conditions, and pay attention to environmental hygiene and disinfection at any time to further improve the efficacy of antibiotics.

3. Pay close attention to the incompatibility. There are many kinds of antibiotics sold in the market. if we do not pay attention to the incompatibility when using it, it will not only fail to prevent and treat the use, but also may cause poisoning and death of livestock and poultry. For example, tetracycline antibiotics have incompatibility with penicillin, iodoamine and chloramphenicol.

4. Strictly control the quantity added. If oxytetracycline is used to treat livestock and poultry diseases, more than 0.1% can be added to the feed, while when used as a feed additive, only 10 grams per ton of feed need to be added. In order to ensure the curative effect, some farmers often increase the amount of addition, which not only increases the production cost, enhances the drug resistance of pathogenic bacteria, but also pollutes the environment and reduces the benefit.

5. Strictly control the time of medication. On the one hand, after using an antibiotic for a period of time, some pathogens will die, while others will survive, and these surviving pathogens will become resistant to the antibiotic. At the same time, long-term use of the same kind of antibiotics will inhibit the normal growth and reproduction of some beneficial microorganisms in the intestinal tract. On the other hand, controlling the time of medication can also effectively limit the residue of drugs in livestock and poultry products. If oxytetracycline calcium salt is used as a pig feed additive, it should be stopped 7 days before slaughter.