Poultry medicine withdrawal periods
(1 minute 45 seconds estimated reading time)
There are licenced medicines for use in laying hens or meat birds, however some essential drugs such as pain relief and anaesthetic drugs, are not licenced in poultry, but we still need to use these for patient welfare. The law regards all poultry as food producing animals - even if they are your pets - the rules for commercially farmed poultry, still apply to all pet poultry.
If a vet prescribes a medicine that’s not licenced for use in poultry, they need to ensure that the eggs (or meat) from the treated poultry are safe to eat by applying a withdrawal or withhold from eating time. This means that after the given time period, the medicine is likely to have flushed through the bird, and the eggs or meat will be deemed safe to eat without drug residues that may harm human health.
The legal advice, is that where a withdrawal period needs to be applied, then a minimum of 7 days withdrawal should be applied to eggs, and 28 days for meat However, research shows that often 7 days for eggs isn’t enough time to bring the drug levels down to limits that are safe for human consumption.
It may cause you some confusion if your vet prescribed a medicine and gave a withdrawal period, but your friends vet gave them the same medicine with a different withdrawal period … Now, the tricky bit for vets is to decide what is an ‘appropriate’ withdrawal period for each drug they prescribe, without risking human health and unfortunately, there isn’t much guidance out there!
At the Chicken Clinic, I’ve done my own extensive research with input from the veterinary medicines directorate (vet medicines regulatory body), and its still a very confusing subject. My withdrawal periods vary from zero days to 43 days, I’ll make sure you are aware of this before treating your birds!
Please remember that withdrawal periods start at the end of the course of treatment, so if a 7 day treatment is prescribed and the drug has a 7 day egg withdrawal period, then the eggs would be safe to eat again in 14 days. Always check if you’re unsure.
For information relating to medicines, please refer to:
Veterinary Medicine Directorate
All links were current at the time of publishing