Medications

Just curious, since Im awake super early thanks to some escaped horses:frustrated: wreaking havoc on my neighbours pond
I was going through all my animal stuff and noticed I have a regular pharmacy of stuff kicking here. Unused meds.
From Tramadol, to Bio-Clav, Clavamox, tetrasulphasomething or other and so on.
Most of which is expired.
Just curious... what the hey do you do to dispose of these things? That, and with their short "shelf life" yet vets ALWAYS have what you need on hand, how often do they change up their supplies? or is the expiry something that occurs once you take possession of it?

I don't know how often do they change up their supplies

but to dispose of them bring them to your pharmacy and they should be able to dispose of them, or bring them back to the vets.

Yeah, I was thinking of just returning them all. I have no idea why I stashed them like I did???
It was pretty sad grabbing the one bottle with 6 little pills left in it that were for Meiko :(

Things like clavamox have really short shelf lives and shouldn't be kept, but some of the other stuff can be stored for a surprisingly long time. We order our antibiotics (doxy and amoxicillin, mostly) by the 500ct bottles and they usually have at least a three year expiration date.

But if we have other meds that weren't used, we stash them, too. Our vet clinic will often okay the use of the pills we have on hand, and dawg knows we use a lot of antibiotics here, so it makes sense to keep the extras. I usually go through the left-overs once a year and pitch the ones that are expired or return them to the vet for disposal.

Another option--if you have leftover prescriptions that aren't expired and you don't want to keep them, see if your vet offers a low-income program for free drugs for clients. Here they can't resell the drugs, but they can offer them free to clients who can't afford the meds. We always 'recycle' any unused clavamox that way since the shelf life is so short. That way there is at least a chance to help someone else before it expires, even if we won't use it here. :thumbs up