Medicated Feed and Withdrawal Periods

Why feed and not just medicine

Most farms record treatments and vaccinations and never record the feed. On a broiler farm the feed is the largest exposure: standard starter, grower and finisher rations routinely contain a coccidiostat, and the birds eat it every day for weeks rather than once.

The clearest sign is the maintenance ration many feed ranges sell for the final days before slaughter. Its stated distinguishing feature is that it contains no growth promoter and no coccidiostat — which tells you exactly what the ration before it contained.

Set up the feed item once

Go to Feed → Items and open the ration. Fill in what the bag says — not what you remember, and not a figure from another product:

• Medicated — yes or no.
• Active substance — the coccidiostat or promoter named on the label.
• Registration number — the statutory number on the bag. This identifies the exact formulation, and it is the evidence that the ration was a legal one if anyone ever asks.
• Withdrawal, meat — days before slaughter.
• Withdrawal, eggs — days before eggs may be sold.
• Withdrawal, milk — hours before milk may be sold.

Why three periods and not one

A ration can be clear for slaughter and still not clear for eggs. The residue reaches muscle and egg by different routes and clears at different rates, so authorisations set the periods separately — several coccidiostats carry an egg restriction for exactly this reason.

If you keep one figure, a layer flock is the case that breaks it, and it breaks by reading clear when it is not.

Milk is in hours rather than days because dairy withdrawals are commonly expressed in milkings. A cow milked twice a day crosses a day boundary mid-period, so whole days either discard milk that was fit to sell or release milk that was not.

A blank is not a zero

Some formulations genuinely state a zero-day withdrawal. That is an answer, and you should enter 0.

An empty field is not an answer — it means nobody read the label. FuroTrack will not let you save a feed marked medicated with no period stated at all, because a blank treated as zero is exactly how "we never checked" becomes "cleared for sale". If you do not have the bag in front of you, get it before you save.

Then just issue feed normally

Record feed issues against the house or flock as you always would. When the ration is medicated, FuroTrack calculates the clearance dates from the issue date and stores them on that issue. You do not maintain them and they do not need reviewing.

What the block actually does

• Harvest or sale of the birds is refused while the meat clock is running, alongside any treatment or vaccination withdrawal.
• Egg and milk records are still accepted — the product exists and discarding it is also a fact worth recording — but they are flagged with the hold and the reason.
• A till sale of named produce is refused while its clock is running.

One honest limit: an anonymous gate sale — "12 litres, cash", no animal named — has nothing to check against, and the sale record says so rather than implying it was checked.

If a withdrawal is already running

The block is not an error to work around. Wait for the clock, or sell the birds into a market that accepts them. If you believe the period is wrong, check the bag again — the period belongs to the formulation, so the same active substance from a different supplier can genuinely carry a different number.