Question about Amoxicillin and Clavulanate Liquid medication handling.

[painwheel]

I feel like this is a bit silly of me to ask but I can't quite find the answer for it anywhere on google. There is a rubber stopper with a hole where you can extract medication from it with an oral syringe. I'm unable to get the remainder out without taking out the rubber stopper, does removing it lessen the effectiveness of the antibiotic through more exposure to the air? This feels so obvious and something I should know but I don't want to assume and potentially have to extend my cats treatment by giving her medication that isn't operating at it's full potency. Was there any reason for it to be there outside of reducing the chance of spillage? I've worked around stoppers before with single-use syringes for a cat's diabetes treatment but I'm not understanding the purpose / I'm unsure if it's super easy to contaminate this?

 

[LTS3]

When in doubt, always call the vet to ask

The stopper is there to prevent spillage of the liquid as you hold the bottle upside down with the syringe inside the hole. If you can barely stick the syringe in the hole you should be able to draw out what little medicine remains inside. The top of the syringe just has to be below the surface of the medicine in order to get the last drops out.

Antibitoics are pretty shelf stable so exposure to air won't have any effect on the efficacy of the medicine. Just don't expose the bottle to high or freezing temperatures.