How long can you store feed for?

[Sally PB]

I tend to prioritize texture in my food more than I used to

Give me CRUNCH (eg, popcorn) and creeeeeaaaammmmmmmy (eg, chocolate). Separately, but in that particular case, together is fine.

I think I fried most of my sense of smell with ammonia fumes developing blueprints.

 

[Bawkbok]

I also cannot smell or taste as with Stormcrow's issues, but I can 'taste' odors, some not all, in the back of my throat. Cannot smell anything cooking, flowers, herbs, rain, spring air, etc. but I can smell rancid nasty stuff like diesel fuel, dog poop, some molds, and something burning in the oven because I forgot about it. This makes smelling chicken feed impossible. With such a small flock, it takes forever to go through a 50lb bag and I've yet to find smaller bagged options. We store it in an air tight (supposedly) container in the house on a tile floor. The temperature is usually the same within a few degrees, no humidity in the house either. Garages and porches are out of the question here due to the moisture content of the air. I guess if it goes stale or moldy within a couple months if the girls are still eating it, I'm not going to worry. I suspect if something smells funny to them, they won't eat it. I'm guessing.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I also cannot smell or taste as with Stormcrow's issues, but I can 'taste' odors, some not all, in the back of my throat. Cannot smell anything cooking, flowers, herbs, rain, spring air, etc. but I can smell rancid nasty stuff like diesel fuel, dog poop, some molds, and something burning in the oven because I forgot about it. This makes smelling chicken feed impossible. With such a small flock, it takes forever to go through a 50lb bag and I've yet to find smaller bagged options. We store it in an air tight (supposedly) container in the house on a tile floor. The temperature is usually the same within a few degrees, no humidity in the house either. Garages and porches are out of the question here due to the moisture content of the air. I guess if it goes stale or moldy within a couple months if the girls are still eating it, I'm not going to worry. I suspect if something smells funny to them, they won't eat it. I'm guessing.

You should be fine - I'm also in FL (north and west of you) and store my feed in a locker outside. If you can get your feed bucket off the floor, it helps - though in a temp controlled room you don't have the concerns w/ condensation or wicking that I do.

and going back to my original response, 3 months is a somewhat arbitrary line. At that point, a crumbled feed is **assumed** to be beginning to degrade - but it certainly hasn't lost all nutritional value. By controlling temp, light, moisture, air, you are doing all that can reasonably be expected to reduce the degradation.

Only thing left is to read the mill dates on feed bags when purchasing, and buy the freshest feed you can.

 

[Campshappy]

Does brand affect shelf life. One average how many months could you store food in the original bag. ETC.

We buy Country Spirit brand. I believe their all 40 pound bags.

Layer Pellets, Cracked corn, Hatch to hen and duck and geese Pellets.

I would assume 6 months max but I would like to know from people who perhaps buy food and store it for long term. Last year we bought a 10 pound bag of Kalmbach? crumble as we hatched goslings and even opened and forgotten 8 months later it seemed fine and eventually it got included into the hens feed when some of our girls had a really tough molt.

Location a walk out basement.

Well I just opened a bag of feed that was bought the end of September. Looks like moths were in the bag so about 25/30% powder now Didn’t have a problem stocking up half a years worth at a time in years past but we must have gotten a bad batch right after the hurricane hit.

 

[PhantomSlayer]

Well I just opened a bag of feed that was bought the end of September. Looks like moths were in the bag so about 25/30% powder now Didn’t have a problem stocking up half a years worth at a time in years past but we must have gotten a bad batch right after the hurricane hit.

Half a year wow lol Personally I would be happy with 3 months but my mother who is transportation would probably like it to be half a year lol

 

[birdlady11]

I'm in Florida and the humidity wrecks havoc with feed down here (crumbles and pellets). So I got a small chest freezer and I repackage my chicken feed or wild bird seed in gallon ziplock bags and store them in the freezer. That way I don't have to worry about my feed going bad from either humidity or age.

The only thing one has to remember is to allow the bag of feed to come to room temp before opening the bag. This prevents condensation forming inside the bag ("sweating") and keeps the feed from being exposed to moister which can cause it to clump or go bad.

The added benefit to freezing is that it kills any bugs or bug eggs that sometimes get into feed during the the harvest and packaging of feeds and seeds.

As for the smell of the feed, just learn what your feed smells like when you get a new bag and the chickens are eagerly eating it. You can then compare that smell with all future bags. You don't have to have a bloodhound nose, just good enough to differentiate one smell from another. If your sniffer isn't very good, recruit a family member as your sniff tester.

 

[gtaus]

Does brand affect shelf life.

I only get 2 different brands. I don't think it made any difference on shelf life.

One average how many months could you store food in the original bag. ETC.

As others have mentioned, your storage conditions probably play a bigger factor than how many months it was stored. I live in northern Minnesota, and I suspect my feed stored at 40F in the winter will last much longer than someone down south stocking up feed in 100F temps. I think you should get 3-6 months under good storage conditions.

I no longer store my feed in the original feed bags. I transfer my feed to 5-gallon buckets with airtight lids. I think that slows down any aging of the feed quite a bit. Even so, I label and rotate the stored feed always using the oldest feed first. I normally try to keep 1-2 months of feed in storage but have purchased as much as 4-5 months of feed in the winter if there is a really good sale.

I would assume 6 months max but I would like to know from people who perhaps buy food and store it for long term.

Is there some reason that you would want to store feed for 6 months? The only reason I can think of would be to buy in bulk or maybe stock up on bags if there was a really great sale. Otherwise, I don't want to store more than maybe 1-2 months of feed. Fresher feed is probably better, and if you can't save money by putting feed into storage, why bother loading up on feed?

I once checked into buying bulk feed to save money, but with only 10 chickens in my flock, it turns out that I would have to buy more than 1 years of bulk feed to get that lower price. If you know other chicken owners, you might be able to pool your resources together to make a bulk purchase and then split the cost and the feed depending on your needs.

If you store feed only to save money, then you might want to see if your local feed store offers discounts on broken bags. My local Fleet store will sell broken "Oops" bags that get ripped or torn at a discount. I have gotten anywhere from 15% to 50% on broken bags that were mostly full. I have always come out ahead on buying those ripped bags. I only go into town maybe once a week, but I always check the Fleet store to see if they have any discounted feed bags that were ripped. I'll buy those "Oops" bags at a heavy discount and store them up in 5-gallon buckets. But I seldom have more than 3-4 months at most of feed in storage.

 

[Bawkbok]

I'm in Florida and the humidity wrecks havoc with feed down here (crumbles and pellets). So I got a small chest freezer and I repackage my chicken feed or wild bird seed in gallon ziplock bags and store them in the freezer.

This is a fantastic idea. I don't know why I didn't think of that since I tend to freeze everything here, including bread.
Question - do you first thaw the feed in the fridge, from freezer to fridge to room temperature to gradually decrease the temperature or do you go straight from the freezer to room temperature? Thank you.

 

[gtaus]

I'm in Florida and the humidity wrecks havoc with feed down here (crumbles and pellets). So I got a small chest freezer and I repackage my chicken feed or wild bird seed in gallon ziplock bags and store them in the freezer. That way I don't have to worry about my feed going bad from either humidity or age.

Just wondering how much it costs to run a freezer to store chicken feed? Do you find that freezing feed actually saves you money compared to feed that would go bad if you did not freeze it?

Not that I have too much to brag about living in northern Minnesota, but today's low temp is -10F with a high expected to be +1F this afternoon. I store my feed in my garage with heat set at about +40F. But I could move the feed to an outside shed and essentially use it like a chest freezer. But even in the garage, it's like putting the feed in the refrigerator. I think that prolongs the life of stored feed.

In any case, I don't hesitate to load up on chicken feed in the winter months if I find a really good sale, or those "Oops" broken bag discounts like I mentioned. The cold weather works to my advantage for feed storage. In the summer, I do limit my stored feed to about one bag at a time. A bag of feed will last me almost one month.

We don't get Florida heat, but we have been known to get 80F or hotter in the summer!

 

[bearcreekbees]

Ground feed (crumbles, pellets, mash) starts to oxidize the minute it is exposed to oxygen. How fast it degrades after that is dependent upon storage conditions and the amount of heat, moisture, oxygen the feed is exposed to. On the occasions when I do use pellets (vacation, cancer recovery, etc.) I always plan to use the entire bag within 6-8 weeks. If I can't use it up within that time frame, and it isn't winter when the pellets would freeze out in my barn, I fill gallon plastic bags and store them in my chest freezer until needed.

Whole grains can easily be stored for 2-3 years, again, provided that they are kept free from moisture and excessive heats- but they are not nearly as subject to degradation as ground feed under similar conditions.

I am also in Northern MN. I store my whole grains in two ways- one is in galvanized metal trash cans with lids. The cans sit on 2" thick pieces of rigid foam insulation to keep them from comin gin contact with the concrete floor. The other way I store them is in a wooden feed bin which sits on top of another layer of wood sheeting. All of my whole grains freeze during the winter, which serves to preserve the nutrition in them even longer.

Extended storage is one reason why I decided to go with a fermented whole grain diet for my chickens (which I supplement with animal meat, organs, and fat). The other reason is that in a SHTF scenario I can always take some of those whole grains and plant them to grow more in the event that the feed stores shut down. I try to keep a 2-3 year supply on hand at all times, just in case.