The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: SouthMains on August 07, 2012, 09:08:11 am
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I was just wondering why it needs to be apple cider vinegar that we give to chickens rather than any other type of vinegar, as it seems that the purpose of the vinegar is to increase the gut acidity, why would any other type not do just the same job , but at less cost :thumbsup:.
I accept that there may be additional micronutrients or minerals in the cider vinegar that you wouldn't get in the chip shop malt vinegar, but if I am using in just for acidity and am relying on the good balanced food they get to provide the nutrients then is there any reason why I can use a different type of vinegar?
:thinking:
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Malt vinegar is made from barley and much more acidic, cider vinegar is well known for various health benefits including ph levels in the gut.
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Thanks Fowlman I hadn't thought about looking at the acidity, so have gone and done a quick check and the acidity of most shop bought cider vinegars is around 5%, which is comparable with red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar and malt vinegar.
For anybody intersted in the science behind vinegar I found this site
http://www.versatilevinegar.org/faqs.html (http://www.versatilevinegar.org/faqs.html)
so it appears that the additional benefits seem to be related to the nutrients that are imparted by the source material, which if I am giving them a good varied diet should be available anyway.
So i am going to do a test and give one lot of my hens cider vinegar and the others malt vinegar, then i will get OH to score them on how healthy they look, egg yield , energy levels...anything else I can think off. i wont tell him which have had which vinegar and see if there is any difference. I guess if I run this for a fortnight we should be able to see any difference....I suppose to be totally fair I should have a third group who don't get any vinegar...but I don't have enough space to be able to split the flock into 3.
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If you do this you should write it up as an article for one of the smallholder magazines. A lot of the things we are advised to do I am sure do not have any good evidence base. The problem is to detect any difference you would probably need thousands of chickens!
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I do have 30 chickens so my sample size is a bit on the small size but it will be fun anyway.
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We've stopped ACV as the benefits are not measurable but the cost is. Whilst there are trace elements and stuff they should get that free ranging. Gut acidity helps with worms, but only if it is used occasionally, as the worms adapt to it if used continuously. Coccidiosis is restricted, but only killed at a 3% mix and ours won't drink anything above 1.5%. We now add it to the odd fresh drinker no more than once a month, if only to use it up. I think our money would be better spent on some fresh veg over Winter.