I use ACV to scrub out my water tub, I just splash a bit in the bottom and scrub out with a brush, putting a cup or so in the full tub helps keep it cleaner longer.
I made applesauce treat bars with ACV once and om nom nom the horses LOVED it! They scarfed it down and then licked my hands :lol: But man oh man…the smell! PUTRID! :no:
[QUOTE=jm2;5948016]
In order to get the benefits of ACV…it needs to be all natural, “with the mother.” The “mother” is the brown slime that settles at the bottom of the bottle. Apparently nothing can “live” in the mother. It is touted as an anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-biotic. It is considered an all around de-tox. Apparently good for arthritis too.
I have used all natural ACV for YEARS. Every horse gets 2 oz. in feed daily, up to 8 oz. a day in cases of an abcess, skin condition (which I haven’t seen in years), snotty nose (which I have not had in years), fly control (which I have never had a major fly problem.
FWIW (and this may be TMI, lol) I came up with some kind of funky fungus on my lower arms over the summer. Possibly ringworm - who knows. Anyway, I doctored it with anti-fungal cream and that made a dent in it, but I could not get it to clear up. Before calling my dermatologist, I decided to apply all natural ACV to my arms and then use a Tea Tree Oil/Olive oil mix. By god - it went away! Within days.
I always have a spray bottle of ACV/Tea Tree Oil in the barn to spray feet with when we get long periods of wet weather.
I think it is great stuff. There are several manufacturers, I usually buy Bragg’s - by the gallon.
To learn more, go to http://bragg.com/products/bragg-organic-apple-cider-vinegar-for-horses.html[/QUOTE]
I, too, use Bragg’s for all sorts of benefits. Salad dressing – for the horses AND for us. I’ve used it on warts and, literally - caused the warts to fall out overnight. (put some ACV on Q-tip cotton, place on wart with band-aid or duct tape grin and leave on overnight.) Hubby had a couple of holes in his knees from where the warts were but the warts fell off. Holes healed up in a couple of days. Drink 1 tsp in glass of H20 for gut ‘maintenance’ … helps with IBS. Also helps with warding off scratchy throats and colds. Thrush remedy; yeast remedy; fly deterrent; all sorts of uses. As a child I remember my mother and father both drinking a glass of ACV and water every morning AND … would force ME to drink when the 24 hr flu attacked. As much as I hated it then, it worked. It’s rich in potassium and enzymes. Also in iron,boron and minerals. And tons of friendly micro’floras’ for the gut. Great stuff. 
But yes, organic and with the "mother’ in it. The processed stuff is nothing … 
Oh, and use it for ‘flea rinses’ for the dogs. Keeps the fleas at bay. Too many different uses to list …
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I would say “minute amounts” of potassium, etc. and not “tons”. :lol:
And if your vinegar contains “flora”, you ought to buy a new bottle. :eek:
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[QUOTE=Appsolute;5947651]
When I was a working student, we would use vinegar as part of an after workout rinse. Seemed to help cut the grime without drying as much as soaping up. Left the coats shiny, but I never liked the smell (goes away once the horse is dry, but still!).
I do like to use vinegar for stinky horse laundry, seems to help get the smell out (same goes for my hubbies stinky athletic gear).[/QUOTE]
It’s also very good at removing cat pee smell!
[QUOTE=deltawave;5948330]
I would say “minute amounts” of potassium, etc. and not “tons”. :lol:
And if your vinegar contains “flora”, you ought to buy a new bottle. :eek:
http://www.webmd.com/diet/apple-cider-vinegar[/QUOTE] You’re right. I forgot the word “feeds” the tons of gut microflora (as in promotes healthy gut flora).
I also forgot to mention another important aspect of ACV – it’s been shown to improve insulin sensitivity so is beneficial in controlling IR.
[http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/27/1/281.full]
I use a rinse with ACV on my horse when he has crusty tick or chigger bites. It does seem to help with the itching. Also, I got a recipe for fly spray off this forum that contains 5 parts ACV and a bunch of other things. Works great, but needs to be applied more often than the big gun stuff. 1 Tbl. ACV with 1Tbl. honey in hot water has helped me kick a bug out of my system before it takes hold MANY times.
Training and running horses, that we would haul around, some horses didn’t drink good in places they were not familiar with the local water.
We used to regularly add a very small glug of apple cider vinegar to all water buckets, so their water, we thought, smelled familiar and they would keep drinking well no matter wherever they were.
Can’t say if it worked.
Just one more use for acv.
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[QUOTE=deltawave;5948330]
And if your vinegar contains “flora”, you ought to buy a new bottle. :eek:[/QUOTE]
Not if it’s just growing “the mother,” which is a lay name for the complex of cellulose and acetic acid that drives vinegar production. It forms sometimes in commercial ACV when the sugar or alcohol hasn’t fully processed into vinegar. It’s not dangerous.
I cook a lot of apple pie and cobbler, and making ACV is as simple as tossing the peels/cores in a lidded bucket with water and letting it sit for a few months. I can’t imagine paying $16+ per gallon for it. :eek:
That said, I’m not in the ACV evangelism club. Like deltawave said, it’s a weak acid. It is useful in applications that call for a weak acid, like cooking or homemade spray cleaner. I add it to my homemade fly spray in combination with essential oils, but you could get similar results with white vinegar. I don’t feed it to my horse.
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But the “mother” is (as I understand it) just the byproducts of bacterial fermentation, not the bacteria themselves. I’m pretty sure nothing living ought to be in ACV. :dead:
Way to recover, Gwen. :lol:
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[QUOTE=deltawave;5949286]
But the “mother” is (as I understand it) just the byproducts of bacterial fermentation, not the bacteria themselves. I’m pretty sure nothing living ought to be in ACV. :dead:
Way to recover, Gwen. :lol:[/QUOTE] Hey – Guess I had a “RP” moment (after last night’s debate guess SRs are now to be called RPs … Rick Perry moments). At my age they’'re common; at RP’s age? Not so much … And I even “previewed” my post before posting it.
You’re right. I forgot the word “feeds” the tons of gut microflora (as in promotes healthy gut flora).
and how exactly does it do that? the “mother” is a mat of mostly-dead bacteria that eats alcohols and sugars and turns it into acetic acid. The bacteria in your gut eat fiber. Eating an apple will feed your gut bacteria far more effectively than drinking apple cider vinegar.
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Remember we’re dealing with a product here that for whatever reason has the veneer of something bordering on the magical. It’s best not to question too closely why it is said to work . . . gets off the path of “biochemistry” and onto the one of “belief systems” pretty quickly and with no apparent directional signage. :lol:
It’s probably harmless, and hopefully even the fancy blends are dirt cheap. Everyone needs something to believe in . . . at least ACV is difficult to OD on due to the stench! :eek:
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I notice that a shampoo I use that is helping our Bull Terrier with horrible itchy skin and a nasty brown ‘yeast’ on his underbelly and inner thigh skin contains 2%
acetic acid (plus ketoconazole 1% and Chlorhexidine Gluconate 2%). It is by an American company called DermaPet. After years of experimentation, this seems to be a product that helps and was recommended by a vet with dermatological experience.
Not Apple Cider Vinegar, though.
Ketoconazole is yeast’s natural enemy. And an acidic milieu helps, as well. No mystical mother requied. 
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[QUOTE=wendy;5949465]
and how exactly does it do that? the “mother” is a mat of mostly-dead bacteria that eats alcohols and sugars and turns it into acetic acid. The bacteria in your gut eat fiber. Eating an apple will feed your gut bacteria far more effectively than drinking apple cider vinegar.[/QUOTE]Actually, the ‘mother’ is what has caused the apple ‘juice’ to become vinegar. It is far from being a ‘mat of mostly-dead bacteria’. It is live yeast and bacterias and yes, acidic so it is helpful in re-establishing a gut pH that is balanced.
No mystical mother requied.
Nothing ‘mystical’ about it unless one is not familiar with how vinegars (and many other beverages and condiments) are made to begin with. Of course when the vinegar is processed the beneficial live yeasts and bacteria (vitamins and minersals, too) are destroyed. Just like with any other processed foods. But then if one is a ‘believer’ in the value of artificially added vitamins, minerals, etc. to processed foods then something ‘live’, as in food, might seem a bit ‘mystical’. So much for ‘natural’ education of plain … foods.
Not a food chemist expert here but I think…
The fermentation process itself kills the majority of the bacteria and yeast due to the drop in pH (acidification) or the production of ethanol (making beer- not vinegar). Only few remain viable w/ some species better than others. No processing required (except the “natural processing” by the wee beasties).
In summary, if fermented products are so good for us, I think I’ll choose beer and wine over vinegar - it smells and tastes far better. On the other hand, sauerkraut juice (and ?raw vinegar?) do seem to help w/ scratches due to the acidity and possibly antimicrobial agents produced by the wee beasties…
side note: I’d like to see the processing that can “destroy” minerals. Perhaps remove, but not destroy, unless we are going to start talking Alchemy, perhaps. (vitamins yes, minerals, ah, not so much).
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Again, I’m pretty sure there are NO LIVE ORGANISMS in ACV.
Nothing ‘mystical’ about it unless one is not familiar with how vinegars (and many other beverages and condiments) are made to begin with
Since I majored in microbiology, albeit 20+ years ago, I feel pretty well qualified to say I understand how vinegar is made. :lol: What seems “mystical” to me are the attributes that are given to this most humble of chemicals by those inclined to believe in wives’ tales and such.
As to balancing gut pH with its weak acid, well, simple biochemistry would tell you that the stuff coming out of the stomach (pH of 2 as opposed to ACV’s pH of 4-5) is orders of magnitude more acidic than the ACV, but then again, nobody can really agree on or define what “balanced” gut pH means, so if you think that a couple of ounces of a weak acid can do what stomach acid (1,000 times more acidic) cannot for this “balance”, well, more power to you.
I was under the impression that the “mother” that is left over in a bottle of ACV is not the same as the bacterial culture that is used to make the stuff (also called “mother of vinegar”, so maybe the terminology is confusing) but is in fact simply debris and by-products of the fermentation process. Is this not so?
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DW – this explains very nicely about vinegar.
http://www.learnalittle.com/food/vinegar-mother.htm
If there were no ‘live’ organisms in raw vinegar then one would not have to provide O2 and sugar or kept at a suitable temperature. Raw vinegar is live and is used to make new batches. Processed vinegar is not and can not be used to make more vinegar.
Edited to add another link/reference:
Raw Apple Cider Vinegar
Raw Apple Cider vinegar is different from catering vinegar and it’s one of Mother Nature’s most perfect foods. This murky brown vinegar should have some sediment visible in the bottom of the bottl. That’s the “mother of vinegar”. It is made from fresh, crushed apples which are then allowed to ferment naturally in wooden barrels. Natural Apple cider vinegar should be a rich, brownish colour and if held to the light you might see a tiny formation of “cobweb-like” substances that we call the “mother.” Usually some “mother” will show in the bottom of the vinegar bottle the more it ages. It never needs to be refrigerated. You can also save some “mother” and mix it in to work in other natural vinegars. There’s a pungent odour when you smell the cider vinegar and sometimes it’s so ripened it puckers your mouth and smarts your eyes. These are natural, good signs. The “mother” is made up of living nutrients, and bacteria. That’s what makes the sediment you see settled in the bottom of the bottle.
http://www.ukcider.co.uk/blog/apple-cider-vinegar
The ‘sludge’ you might find at the bottom of a bottle of Heinz Apple Cider Vinegar is just that … dead sludge. The cider has gotten old and bad.
but is in fact simply debris and by-products of the fermentation process. Is this not so?
MOSTLY dead. As the acetic acid builds up (it’s a waste product of the bacterial fermentation) it starts to kill off the bacteria. I bet if it stands around on the shelf for long enough after reaching a certain concentration of acetic acid that it becomes entirely dead. Any remaining living bacteria get promptly killed when they enter your acid-filled stomach; if instead you put it into say a pot of mashed apples the few living ones multiply rapidly and start turning the sugars in the apples into acetic acid. So if you want a good strong dose of “mother” you’d want to eat the rotting apple mash before they turn it into vinegar and kill off the “mother”. Or so you’d think.
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