If you spend any time reading, researching, or conversing in groups about meat rabbits, sooner or later, you will hear someone (or many someones) mention apple cider vinegar (or ACV as many will abbreviate it).
Rabbit breeders and meat rabbit growers use apple cider vinegar for a variety of reasons. Let’s talk about some of the ways that using apple cider vinegar might be helpful when growing meat rabbits.
Jump to:
- Why Apple Cider Vinegar? What do rabbit growers use ACV for?
- How to Administer Apple Cider Vinegar to Meat Rabbits
- How often should you give meat rabbits ACV?
- How Effective is Apple Cider Vinegar for Rabbits?
- ACV as a meat rabbit breeding enhancer
- ACV to treat for calcium in rabbit urine (sludge)
- ACV for meat rabbit immune support
- ACV for overall nutritional boost, condition, and coat improvement
- At the end of the day, there really isn’t any harm in it, anyway.
- Which Apple Cider Vinegar Should You Use for Meat Rabbits?
Why Apple Cider Vinegar? What do rabbit growers use ACV for?
The following is a list of the main uses for apple cider vinegar for meat rabbits. These are the things that most rabbit breeders are using apple cider vinegar for.
Disclaimer*: this list is compiled from websites, resources, and meat rabbit breeding groups. I have used ACV for some, but not all, of these purposes.
- As a breeding aid to promote receptiveness and fertility (it’s said if a doe is not lifting or is not receptive, put ACV in her water for a week and try again)
- Reduce calcium buildup (sludge) in urine
- Decrease urine odor
- Help prevent urinary tract infections
- Promote healthy skin and coat
- Add shine and softness to rabbit hides (fur)
- Aid in clearing mastitis infections in nursing does
- Promotes nutrient absorption
- As a source of vitamins (mainly B vitamins and trace amounts of several others)
- As a source of probiotics for gut health
- As a source of probiotics to prevent weaning enteritis
- Supports rabbit immune systems
- Acts as a repellant to ward off biting insects, mosquitoes, mites, and fleas (said to change the smell of the rabbits and is off-putting to insects)
- ACV can be mixed into oil such as olive or mineral oil to treat ear mites (mix a few drops into the oil, then apply a few drops to each ear)
- Reduce slime and algae growth in waterers
How to Administer Apple Cider Vinegar to Meat Rabbits
The most common way to give your meat rabbits apple cider vinegar, and by far the simplest, is to mix it into their water before filling crocks or bottles.
If you use an automatic watering system that is gravity-fed from a bucket or barrel, simply add the ACV to the container. It should provide at least some sanitation to the bucket and lines. (See below for more on this discussion about apple cider vinegar as a rabbit water system cleaning aid.)
Application Rate:
- For most uses, a rate of one to two tablespoons per gallon of water is sufficient.
Some things to watch for:
- ACV is of no use if it puts your rabbits off drinking their water
- This is the worst thing for your rabbits!
- At a rate of 1 or 2 tablespoons to one gallon (or a healthy splash in a pail of water – estimating is fine), most rabbits will not blink an eye at drinking the water with the ACV
- However, if it’s new, they might notice
- Rabbits are most likely to sense the change in larger amounts (on the two tablespoons per gallon end)
- If you think your rabbits are drinking less with ACV in the water, reduce the amount of vinegar and build up to the 1 to 2-tablespoon amounts
- You may need to start with ½ to 1 tablespoon in the beginning and gradually increase the amount – whatever is necessary, so they continue to drink plenty of water
How often should you give meat rabbits ACV?
The answer to this depends on what you’re using the apple cider vinegar for.
Some people use ACV every day, all year long. If you want an overall health and immune booster, or for urinary tract health, this makes sense.
If your goal is maintaining cleanliness of water lines, this would also make sense. Do note that some breeders say the amount you would need to use to keep waterers algae-free would be too much and the rabbits probably wouldn’t drink it. There could be a definite point here.
Rise and Shine Rabbitry (one of the authors of the Beyond the Pellet book) uses ACV in cycles – use for three months, then three months off.
If you are using ACV in hopes that it will help keep parasites off your rabbits, it would make sense to time your cycle with the seasons.
Personally, I use it intermittently and mostly for urinary care. When I notice more sludge in the urine, I break out the ACV. If an animal looks a little dull and like they could use some conditioning or an immune/nutrition boost, I am likely to add a little ACV to that water (or all of them – because it doesn’t hurt anyone to have it).
Another time you might choose to use ACV is in times of stress, like for nursing mothers, new rabbits, or in high heat in summer.
How Effective is Apple Cider Vinegar for Rabbits?
Results are mixed on this. You will see some people swearing by using apple cider vinegar for their meat rabbits, and some people saying it’s had little to no effect.
More than likely, the results depend more on what you’re using the ACV for. The two main reasons I use or have used ACV are to promote fertility and willingness to breed and to reduce sludge in urine.
ACV as a meat rabbit breeding enhancer
I have seen little impact when adding it as a breeding enhancer. Which is to say, I don’t think it made any difference, or such little difference that it was negligible at best. It was not a “magic pill” that instantly turned an unwilling doe into a willing and ragingly receptive doe.
I’ve discussed this with a long-time breeder in my area (with decades of experience behind him), and he was not convinced, either. (He did say there seems to be days when all the rabbits are receptive, and when it’s “on” he and another breeder will often call each other and to share that it’s a really good rabbit breeding day! They are, after all, animals more in touch with the rhythms of nature than we probably are!).
ACV to treat for calcium in rabbit urine (sludge)
As a treatment for urine sludge, I do think it had some success. I’m able to gauge this (perhaps more easily than some other breeders) because I use the drop pans, so I can easily see thick, whitish sludge in the pans.
When I see this on the increase, I use some ACV in the water and, while it doesn’t disappear completely, it does seem to improve. I’m not sure that you would see the sludge disappear completely, especially with older bucks and older rabbits. But it does seem to manage it well enough.
As bucks get older, I might give them ACV more frequently to reduce urinary sludge and calcium buildup and to prevent this from causing a blockage in the urinary tract. In that case, I would give it daily, all the time, at least to the target rabbit(s).
ACV for meat rabbit immune support
As an immune support, it is difficult to tell because I do have overall good health in my rabbitry. This, of course, is the result of many management efforts and the setup of the rabbit barn, cleaning, etc.
It also results from the selection of breeder and keeping healthy lines.
The bottom line is that ACV probably can help you here, but you will need to make rabbit health and hardiness more of an effort than just throwing apple cider vinegar in their water. It’s a whole management game.
ACV for overall nutritional boost, condition, and coat improvement
As for nutrition, coat, and condition, I do agree that a high-quality, livestock-grade rabbit pellet at 16 or 18 percent protein will give you the easiest and best solid nutrition and feeding base (I do free-feed a small rack of hay, too, which some eat more of than others – no more than two ounces by weight per day, which is what a generous fistful weighs).
I recognize and believe this can also be achieved with other diets, including all-natural diets without commercial pellets, but this also requires a good deal of research and effort to balance the feed completely.
That said, I can see that the vitamin boost and probiotics from unpasteurized, unfiltered apple cider vinegar could be beneficial. ACV has a lot of B-vitamins, along with probiotics, acetic acid, and immune-boosting plant-based antioxidants.
We know that gut health and probiotic balance is critical in rabbits (both pet and meat), so it stands to reason that a supplement that boosts some vitamins, supports the immune system, and delivers probiotics could improve nutrient uptake and overall nutrition and body condition.
Here, the proof would be in observing your rabbits. Again, there’s a lot that impacts my (and everyone’s) rabbits’ health and condition, but even with the best pellets available, some rabbits will need a boost to get their coat and condition up to snuff (which is a little bit subjective).
I find that older rabbits and breeding does (older breeding does especially) sometimes need a boost. ACV and sunflower seeds are usually my go-to and their coats and condition do tend to respond well.
At the end of the day, there really isn’t any harm in it, anyway.
Research into the benefits of apple cider vinegar use has been limited even for human use, and there’s even less of an effort use with for meat rabbits. Meat rabbits don’t tend to be a big area of focus for researchers, even animal researchers, so this comes as no surprise.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try using ACV in your rabbitry. It just means that you will have to observe and decide if using apple cider vinegar seems to have the desired effect that you’re going for.
Rise and Shine Rabbitry suggests sticking with it for at least four weeks and assess to see if you notice improvement. This seems fair; any supplement or addition is going to need some time to work and be noticeable.
At the end of the day, ACV is a food product, and there’s no harm in using it, either. It’s fairly cheap, readily available (at least for most of us), and won’t do any harm. Even the naysayers say it can’t hurt, and there’s no harm in trying.
The best advice that I can give is use it if you so choose, watch, and see what comes of it. Feel free to leave your experiences in the comments!
Which Apple Cider Vinegar Should You Use for Meat Rabbits?
For the largest range of benefits, use (preferably organic) unfiltered and unpasteurized apple cider vinegar with the mother.
Filtered and pasteurized vinegar will work for some of the purposes listed above; for others, it won’t because the filtering and the pasteurization will have killed off the natural probiotics, and the ACV will not work as a source of active live cultures.
- Filtered and pasteurized would be effective for treating urine sludge and for a B vitamin boost
- Filtered/pasteurized would likely maintain some antioxidant immune support, but that may be reduced as heat often destroys some of the polyphenols that act as antioxidants
- Only an unpasteurized ACV will have active, live cultures and probiotics, preferably with the mother
- As a cleaning and maintenance additive for cleaner waterers, any ACV will have the same percent (level) of acidity, so either is fine
- Do look for an apple cider vinegar that is made from apple cider, and not just the colored or flavor-added kind (which is really nothing more than white vinegar and won’t have the same nutrient and vitamin benefits as real ACV)
At the end of the day, you’ll get the widest range of benefits from unpasteurized, unfiltered vinegar, and application is the same either way, so my vote would be to go with the natural vinegar with the mother for the most bang for your buck and for your time and effort.
Leave a Reply