perchie.girl :
A.T. Hagan :
Yes, I've done this. Using 55 gallon plastic drums, dry ice, and buckets of Damp Rid desiccant.
It's important the drums seal fully, they are stored out of contact with the ground and out of the direct sun.
For whole grains you should get an easy two years of storage. Maybe a good deal more depending on your climate. Here in Florida it's hot for such a long part of the year that I don't try to store feed for really long periods since it's kept in my non-climate controlled workshop. You folks in the more northern areas could do a lot better.
This is for whole grains. For milled feed (as in ground up) I would not try to store it more than a year no matter how you packed it unless you can keep it in climate controlled storage. The more sensitive vitamins degrade quickly relative to the more stable carbs, proteins, and minerals.
This is good news. I am in the high desert we dont get the high temps that the low desert does but its up around 105-110 a few weeks out of the summer. I have a place to store the grain that while its open to the outside air it is always shaded. A patio room. My idea is to buy in bulk for my horse goats and poultry. Basically Alfalfa pellets, COB, and Flock Raiser. Plus BOSS. All my animals get BOSS.
If I wanted to dispense a portion of the feed is it acceptable to add more CO2? Damp Rid Desiccant What is that? I have seen desiccant packets in Jerky is that the same stuff? We are at around 10-15 percent humidity here most of the year. Annual rain fall including snow is between 7-10 inches per year.
It can be made to work for the COB and the BOSS and maybe for the alfalfa pellets. It won't work well for the Flock Raiser.
Gas purging such as what you are thinking of works best when the space between the food particles (the intersitial space) is large enough to permit easy flow of the heavier CO2 as it rises up from the bottom pushing out the lighter, oxygen rich head gas. The Flock Raiser is too fine in texture to allow that.
If you live in the high desert then there may be no need for the desiccant if you pack the drums in a dry time of year. By desert standards Florida is humid even in our dryer periods. During the rainy season it is very humid so a desiccant can be beneficial if you can use enough of it to make a practical difference.
There is little difference between human food storage and animal feed storage except that animal feed is usually stored in larger containers in non-climate controlled locations. It's the stored outside (as in a barn, etc.) that matters the most since heat plays a major role in loss of the more sensitive nutrients such as many vitamins, rancidity of fats, and so on. Properly packed you can store whole grains for at least several years, probably the alfalfa pellets, but I would not try to keep milled feed such as the Flock Raiser for long periods of time. Over a winter sure, across a summer not so much.
