Okay, So now we're going to talk about pharmacology basics for small flocks. A lot of this is going to be kind of a regulatory focus for North America and specifically for the United States, but a lot of this is similar around the world. So one of the unifying concepts here is that all poultry, all poultry, so whether we're talking about, you know, guinea fowl, chickens, turkeys, pheasants, peacocks, these are considered food animals, even if they are pets. You can have a chicken named Fluffy and love her to death, but she is legally considered a food animal. This means that as a veterinarian, you need to take a lot of caution with what you prescribe. There are legal ramifications for what you do. Certain substances in the United States are illegal to administer to food animals. Residues in eggs and tissues may have human health consequences. So that means things that are left over from inappropriate use of medications or antibiotics may persist into eggs or into tissues like meats and fat that you might be consuming as a human food source and those can actually cause human health issues. As someone who has an antibiotic allergy i'm very aware of the happiness that I live in the United States, where antibiotic residues are virtually nonexistent because of these laws. So this is a screenshot here on the right of restricted and prohibited drugs in food animals. This is based in federal law. It's important that you know it if you're going to be seeing any of these species and even if you don't. You can access this list by going to this link there are farad.org. This is a food animal residue awareness database that is sort of a para government organization that's dedicated to really helping us make really judicious drug use decisions in these animals. If you find yourself in the position that you need to treat a poultry animal with something that is not labeled, so if you're looking for an off label usage and there's a lot of things we have to reach for off label because there's not a lot labeled for poultry, you're going to want to consult farad for withdrawal times just to make sure that you have your bases covered. If it's off label, you also need to have a conversation with your client and ensure that they are aware of and agrees to what a withdrawal time is in accordance to farad recommendations. And when I say withdrawal, what I mean is if farad says this person should not eat fluffy eggs for 14 days, that is a withdrawal time of 14 days since the last administered antibiotic. So. As personally, I always add a little bit of extra time on the end just to guard myself. But you're going to want to make sure that they understand the consequences of what they're doing for their health as well as what they're doing for their bird's health. For you as a veterinarian, it's very important that you never risk your license through injudicious drug usage. You never risk legal action against yourself. And then most importantly, you never risk the public health of the populace because the things we do in food animals, whether they're pets or not, does have ramifications there. 

And, you know, as that question just a few minutes ago went to and microbial and antiparasitic stewardship is essential to our continued ability to treat these birds for conditions that are treatable innately. We do have a limited selection of drugs that we can use on label. So there's only a certain amount of things that say, yes, you can use it in an egg laying chicken or yes, you can use this in a turkey. But poultry, again, are food animal species, so human health consequences can be present if we use drugs that aren't labeled in a way that is inappropriate. You want to use every opportunity to educate clients about these concepts. It's a really great opportunity to educate them about why the food supply in the United States and Canada is so safe because we have these laws preventing drug residues. But also this is why we have to have these conversations and understandings about when we use other drugs, what we're able to use and when. When you are seeing a bacterial illness, whenever you have the opportunity to, I want you to pursue a culture and sensitivity. This is something that you know, is standard of care to in our small and large animal species. Always pursue a culture and sensitivity when you're able to. This will not only inform your treatment choice, which is good antibiotic stewardship, but it will also help you to legally support your off label medication decision. So when you write a prescription for an off label drug, you have to say why you decided to do this. So you could say, you know, Fluffy has this infection that is only susceptible to X, Y or Z, therefore I have to use X, Y, Z in accordance to Farad's recommendation. If you have to treat a bacterial disease that is going through an entire small flock, it is warranted to treat the entire flock for the infectious disease or the parasite that's being there. That is because these birds share feed, they should water, they share close living arrangements. I can tell you, matter of experience, there will not be a bird in that flock that has not been at least exposed. So it's best that you just treat everyone in one fell swoop so that the organism dies. And you're not promoting antibiotic resistance by treating this person, and then that bird, and then this other bird, because then you're just introducing that same antibiotic back into a bacterial system that's gaining resistance over time. The individual treatments are labor intensive and they do perpetuate disease cycles. Okay. So that was my quick and easy blurb reminder mostly about regulations, but it's important, it's important to note there's not a whole lot we're legally allowed to use on label in poultry, unfortunately.