Forums HomeGrown Herbalist Student Forum Herbal Medicine Making Help with tincture ratio please…

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    • #65619
      Olivia Timmerman
      Student

        I was making a tincture for my chickens to have on hand for bacterial or viral illness when it comes up. I was following the dosage from Amy Fewell author of The Homesteaders Natural Chicken Keeping Handbook but it doesn’t have enough of the alcohol to make much more than a few tablespoons of liquid in the jar with the herbs. I’m used to folk method tinctures that are swimming in the vodka when put together. Not sure how to fix it to have a safe dosage for the chickens. The directions have 1 0z echinacea, 0.5 0z wormwood, 0.5 0z thyme and 0.5 0z chicory. I didn’t have chicory so it would be even drier of a mix if I had that one to add to it. They call for dried herb which I used. Called to add 10 0z of vodka but it leaves the tincture pretty dry. What do I do to fix it safely? I had measured the dry herbs with a scale so maybe its a bad recipe??  Can anyone help??

        Olivia Timmerman

      • #67461
        Ramona LaBeaf
        Student

          Hi Olivia,

          Your question was from awhile ago, so you may have already gotten an answer, but I was told that you use 5 oz of liquid to every 1 oz of dry plant material.

        • #67466
          Greg Boggs
          Student

            Yeah a 1:4 ratio would be a bit difficult. How much did it call to add to their water? If you wanted to keep with her recipe but add more vodka so you can actually get a tincture,, you can just do a bit more math to get it there. I put apple cider vinegar in my chicken’s water to help them with that. What I would do to marry both ideas, take the herbs and soak them in ACV and add that then to the water. I think the technical term for that is an oxymel if you want to look more into that, also Doc talks about that in this lesson here

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