where to store my feed

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roy2636

roy2636

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i have a fairly tall shed for a chicken coop, I'm able to build a shelf that would hang from the rafters. my question is, that if i do this, could i store my extra feed and treats up on that shelf in the coop? will it spoil faster or anything? with the heat and the cold, i live in the midwest. i plan on making sure the chickens are unable to get up to it.
 
I have used a lot of things that didn't work (it's amazing what raccoons can get into) but recently I saw someone on Craigslist selling a broken drop freezer as a feed bin. It even had a lock.
 
700

I put this up in our coop a few weeks ago. The first couple days our 2 bantams flew up to the top shelf to lay eggs. I solved that by crowding more stuff in there so they wouldn't fit. The Sterlite boxes are from our local dollar store and keep the feed, scratch, and meal worms out of my way and poop free. You can see the one leftover box on the ground gets some action though. We are in the Deep South and it gets HOT, but nothing goes bad.
 
nice. i wanted to build something, almost like a loft, to store all my chicken stuff. like their food and water heater and baby chic stuff. i just didn't know if it would do anything to their food if it was exposed to hot and cold weather for long periods
 
I go through a 40 lb bag of everything in a month, so I haven't kept anything longer than that. If you put in a loft, you may need doors of some kind to keep the chickens from roosting up there. I thought of a loft first, before I did this, but it would have been 7' up and I didn't want to have to drag a ladder in there to feed them everyday. I would have preferred the loft, it just wouldn't work for me.
 
Temperature does have some effect on stored feed. Heat speed up the degradation of nutrients, while cold will slow it down. If you have a high rate of turn over the effect will be minimal. Watch out for high moisture that can cause problems way faster then temperature alone.
 
My climate is extremely hot and dry during the early part of summer and it frequently gets up above 110F-115F. I typically go through a 40 lb bag of feed about once a week and haven't had any problems. I'd say if you go through a bag within about a month I'd think you'd be fine. I'd hesitate with any feed older than 6 months regardless of the temperature range it was stored at due to possible mold, and like Den said, a humid climate is likely the worst. I also do the same as QueenMisha and store everything in metal trash cans. If I didn't the local wildlife would pillage and loot everything within a single evening I'm sure.
 
Den in Penn said:
Temperature does have some effect on stored feed.  Heat speed up the degradation of nutrients, while cold will slow it down.  If you have a high rate of turn over the effect will be minimal.   Watch out for high moisture that can cause problems way faster then temperature alone.
Click to expand...

Sorry to steal this topic, but how do I know if my feed has gone bad. I would assume scratch would put off a bad smell, but what about laying pellets or crumbles?
 
Do you think one of those vittle vault/gamma2 pet food storage containers could be stored in the coop? Cause I have one for chicken food, one for dog food, and the new coop we're building, we built in a little storage room thingy, maybe 4 feet long by 2 feet wide. The coop is 4x8 but we built the base 6x8 to accommodate nest boxes and this storage thing, the nest boxes are probably half and this is half.

Anyway, was thinking of putting this in there but I don't know if it would get too hot outside?

My theory was the food storage container inside the storage room would help protect it even further rather than just a bag of feed sitting in there.

Also what about bucket feeders? Was thinking of trying one or two of those and then I wouldn't even need to store the feed.

We tried it a few months ago and they were scared of it but I was thinking of trying it again but taking other food bowls away this time.

Also for the storage room, do you think i need to add any sort of ventilation?
 

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