Keeping Feed Dry

[jsquared]

We only have three hens so we don't buy massive quantities of food. I buy a 50# bag and store it in the bag in a metal garbage can with the lid on it on a covered porch. I have another can with a bag each of BOSS and 3 grain scratch. Oh yeah, I live in South Florida so humidity is a bit of an issue. I just had to throw out 1/4 bag of BOSS and 1/3 bag of scratch because of moisture and mold. How can I keep the food storage dry?

 

[swimmer]

What I use are the 5 gallon buckets with the lids. The kind you can buy at Home Depot. But, I did get mine from a local bakery. Check around, some grocery stores give them away. Or check the classifieds or just go buy some. They lids snap on and stay very tight. The lids I have, have a rubber seal. Anyway, those work the best for me.

 

[caspernc]

find place in the house! or share with a neighbor.

 

[Cargo]

I have heard that if you take a small mesh bag full of uncooked rice it will pull a lot of moisture out of the air.
Also, you can get desiccant packs from Home Depot/Lowes.

 

[TheFarmMama]

We use the nice Rubbermaid containers with the lock on lids...we've never had any bug or moisture issues. Works like a charm.

 

[Rozzie]

Store it in an air conditioned part of the house. That will keep the excess moisture out. You could not do this if you had large numbers of birds, but you could easily do this for one bag of feed. This will also help conserve the vitamin content. Some types of vitamins in feed are damaged by feed storage in warm places.

In the winter, spring, and fall, I store all of our animal feed (cat, dog, birds) in the garage. It's handy there and I don't have to go out of my way to get it. Once the garage warms up in summer, though, it gets moved to the basement where it is cooler. (I have a SUPER dry basement. If my basement were moist, I'd store the feed elsewhere--even if that meant Buckets or Rubbermaids in the dining room.

Empty WELL CLEANED kitty litter buckets also get used to store feed here!

 

[rungirl]

I use a metal can also and it isn't good at keeping the moisture out, but I go through a feed pretty fast so it's not a big deal. If you leave the feed in the bag and just drop the whole bag in, it will stay dryer than if you pour it out into the can. I only use the trash can to keep mice out of it. Or you can buy a rubbermaid trash can and you won't have the moisture problem.