It was fresh when I got it... I got paranoid about the supply chain back then and ordered two bags. By the time they finished the first, it had been almost half a year and wasn’t a good idea to start the second. So I bought a fresh new one that was less than a month old (since the mill date). I’ll store it in the basement and hope it lasts until they finish it!
Half a year!? My chickens must be wasteful little piggies then. I have 6. In 16 weeks my 2nd 50lb bag has about 1/3 left. I also went through 2 7lb bags of chick feed in the beginning.
Oh wow, that sounds horrible! I'm sorry you had to deal with so much. What a sour old man. I really hope ours doesn't find something else to complain about now. At least by this point, the town is so done with him that they are not likely to entertain any future complaints from him. Not regarding the chickens anyway.
Actually I did buy smaller bags of chick starter at the beginning, I forgot about those. So they've gone through more than one bag. But the point is, they do go through them slowly, more slowly than the recommendation of how often to buy fresh, which I guess can be a problem. Maybe I can find somebody else nearby with chickens, to split bags with, so they don't have to sit around for so long. But even then, the frequency of buying bags is not high enough to make the shipping cost prohibitive for somebody with only 5 chickens.
Holy cow even when we had 6 chickens they went through food a lot faster than that! We like the all-flock feed because it's 20% protein for the winter and we feed it to all 8 hens, 2 ducks, and the goose. We have bought 2 bags before. It's always been just fine. Like that normally it's $16. something and now $13. something on sale. Picking it up tonight!
Haha okay so it was probably more than one bag, but not a lot more! I'm obsessed with controlling waste because of my a-hole neighbor situation - I don't want to give him any more reasons to complain (rats etc.) so I've gone through 3 feeders until I found one that's truly no-waste. So, whatever the number of bags, they do go through them slower than what folks recommend about the frequency of buying feed. I wish there was an intermediate size. I can only find 50 lbs and the next size down is those tiny little bags, I think 5-10 lbs or something like that, that are a LOT more expensive per pound and I'd need to buy those a lot more often.
I'd need to think about that some more. Money aside, food waste bothers me, especially when it's recurring and avoidable. One of the things I like about having chickens is that they reduce our food waste significantly, cleaning up kitchen scraps (from produce) that we used to throw away. I don't want to add to my food waste and landfill footprint because of the chickens (and wasted feed will add up and be a non-trivial amount with 50 lbs bags and only 5 chickens). My best bet would be to split bags (and cost) with somebody else.As a very frugal shopper I have often upset my mother by buying bulk packages of things that I know I will throw part of it away.
She's accustomed to buying in small quantities and thinks "price per package" whereas I buy in large quantities thinking "price per pound".
IIRC, the last dispute of that nature had to do with a 5lb block of cream cheese, of which I ended up throwing away about 1.5lbs. But the block cost less than 3lbs worth of 8oz packages. Likewise a 10# bag of carrots where the last couple lbs got sprouty and hairy vs. six-to-eight, 1# bags.
It can be economical to buy the 50# bag of feed then throw out the excess at its end-date instead of paying extra for little bags.
