ACV in hot weather

[ChicKat]

Maybe off topic -- but really interesting. Thanks for explaining.

 

[Digby57]

Just to follow up on the original conversation, I ended up winning an auction for some day-olds and got started a little sooner than I thought I would. I went ahead and offered pure water for the first few hours after I picked them up. Then I cleaned and refilled that waterer and added a second waterer with 2 tablespoons of Bragg's. I kept both full for the first 2 weeks, one quart with just pure water and the other quart with 2 tablespoons of ACV (always Bragg's if it matters). I'm on a well and have both a softener and an iron unit and the water from the tap is 160ppm TDS.

I never saw any difference in the chicks' preference. I experimented with placing the waterers at different places in relation to their feeders and their lamp. I just never saw any difference at all. At the end of 2 weeks I switched to a 5 quart, hanging waterer and have been adding 1 tablespoon to the 5 quarts. One time I refilled the waterer without ACV and saw no difference.

I also saw zero pasty-butt. Of the 13 chicks I received I did lose 1 on the third day, but he just wasn't healthy from the beginning it seemed. He certainly didn't have any pasty-butt. I tried to give him water with a syringe and tried to coddle him, but he was just lethargic and wobbly when he did try to stand and the second morning he was found dead.

So all in all I would say that I will just repeat this method the next time. I'm fairly certain that all of them were drinking from both waterers, just depending on which they were closer to when they decided they were thirsty. I also started them on fermented feed on the very first day mixed with their dry crumbles twice per day while offering crumbles free choice all the time. I should also mention that even with a fan placed up high to blow across (not into) my brooder area and the occasional leaving of the door from my garage into the house open to let some AC into the garage, it has been very hot out there, sometimes up to almost 95* this week, which is going on their 4th week. I haven't had any problems, but I do try to cool it off out there as much as possible. I open the garage window at about 9pm to let it cool off in there over night and then close it at 7AM to keep the cool air in as long as possible. All in all I'm happy with only losing the 1 out of 13 so far, and I won't say its all because of the ACV, but I'm fairly certain that it didn't hurt.