Help! Where is Expiration/manufacturer date on Layer feed? I have Weevil bugs in Country Roads Layer Crumble

[Aliceisalive]

Opened a new bag of 50 pound country roads Layer crumble for chickens bought last night by my husband. Black bugs inside. I see they are weevils.

Please help me find the manufacturer/expire date??? I’ve been researching for 3 hours
all these codes make zero sense.
Note: that big white paper at the bottom was ripped off already when husband bought.

 

[Brooks_]

I am not familiar with that brand, but on the bottom seal of the bag and on the nutrition tag are common places.

 

[BarnyardChaos]

Freeze the bag and the weevils will die. The chickens won't mind the weevils --- extra protein!

 

[Brooks_]

This might be the mill date.

202 day of 2022.

Do they have an 800 number you can call?

 

[Aliceisalive]

I am not familiar with that brand, but on the bottom seal of the bag and on the nutrition tag are common places.

Yeah.. I am reading all over that the piece of paper attached to the bottom has the date but unfortunately it was ripped off already when my husband purchased it last night. That’s why I needed help.

 

[Aliceisalive]

Freeze the bag and the weevils will die. The chickens won't mind the weevils --- extra protein!

This might be the mill date.
View attachment 3379859
202 day of 2022.

Do they have an 800 number you can call?

I’ll find one.

Ok that would be July 21st of 2022…6months ago. I did download a bar code scanner and scanned….says it literally expired today (if the scan app was even right)
This is a brand from rural king. It looked too powdery for crumble. More like sand. Then I found bugs. Likely throwing it out and having a talk with the store. If one bag has them at.a feed store… I imagine other bags next to them do too?

 

[Brooks_]

https://www.cargill.com/animal-nutrition

There is a contact us button at the bottom of the page. They should be able to tell where the mill date is located and (if in code) how to read it.

 

[BarnyardChaos]

Freeze the bag and the weevils will die. The chickens won't mind the weevils --- extra protein!

Let me get this straight...
Chickens normally eat all sorts of insects and worms, and whatever else they can find that would gross us out. But it appears you're bothered by them eating weevils? Why?

Not chickens, but cattle feed. This last fall I stirred into an IBC tote we have that was filled with pelletized cattle feed (protein supplement), meant to be mixed with corn or other grain. It nearly exploded (well, seemed like that to me) with weevils when I disturbed it. Millions of them, everywhere. All over the feed, the tote, the walls, my shovel, and my arms!

I scooped some feed and bugs into a bucket with lid, and raced off to the local feed supplier to talk to their cattle expert (former Extension agent). HE said it's FINE. Won't hurt the cattle, it's just protein to them, and once we get a hard freeze the bugs will die. He was right. I've been using the feed, and haven't seen the bugs since.

 

[Magnumchicken]

I would think that if you had a restaurant that catered to chickens, they would pay more for the feed with the live bugs in it.

I store what I can in the chest freezer until I need the space, but try to freeze it once a month or so or rotate bags in the freezer. I do this with any flour, dry beans, etc that also gets bugs.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

No natural process is 100% efficient. When weevils (or whatever) eat your chicken feed, its overall nutritional value is reduced. Other things may be made more, or less, bioavailable based on transformations of the feed ingredients by the digestion of the weevils themselves.

There are instances where we do that deliberately - fermentation of all sorts, whether making sourdough, vinegar, alcohol, or yogurt - which ends up being a net benefit to us human types, but not necessarily a net benefit to creatures which would normally consume the product in more natural state.

In general, something is given up. Look at a food chain - as you climb up the ladder towards top predator, there are fewer and few of them, total mass of the given species is reduced. Weevils eating your chicken grain is that in a microcosm. Sure, the weevils are a protein source - but they fueled their growth with carbs and proteins in the chicken feed, most (if not all) of which the chicken could have used directly, with out the weevil's "assistance" in pre-processing.