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Subject: Re: vinegar
Author: ridecamp@endurance.net at smtp
Date: 11/21/96 9:32 PM
Diane Arnett wrote:
I heard that apple cider vinegar fed regularly and started before
fly season really helps get rid of flies. Of course this doesn't work
unless you are isolated from other horses, or if not isolated all other
horses in the are use apple cider vinegar. This is just what I've been
told, I've never actually tried it.
Reply:
I lived out west for years and rarely used fly sprays because flys
just weren't much of a problem. Then I moved with my horse to N.E.
Oregon and since I owned a stallion I rented a field and corrals from
a feed lot operator that had been built to hold a Belgian stallion.
Talk about serious fences. Anyway, the corrals were next to the
feedlot which had several hundred head of cattle at any given time.
There were also a half dozen young Apps living in the same corrals
that I was breaking and training for the owner. There were a lot of
small black flies and these nasty tiny little suckers that would eat
on the horses chests and stomachs till the horses were raw from chest
to groin.
I began adding apple cider vinegar to my horses sweet feed, about 1/2
cup per feeding and he was almost completely ignored by both type of
flies while the horses and cattle around him were being eaten. He
craved his vinegar. I would throw his grain in his tub and he would
wait while I went and got the jug of vinegar, hollering and drooling
(him, not me). I haven't used it here in Md since I board my horse out
and it's bit much to expect from the over worked gang at the barn. I
suspect the vinegar changes the "taste" or smell of the horse. Perhaps
their skin ph changes. Probably the cause of the skin scald. By the
way I never had that happen with my Paint horse who certainly did a
lot of sweating as we rode the Wallowa's and the Powder and Snake
canyons. He wasn't the thin coat/skin type though.
Bonnie Snodgrass