Weavils in Feed

[Heartforchickens]

Is it harmful to feed my girls chicken scratch that has weevils in it. I only have two girls and I can only buy scratch in 40 lb. bags. It inevitably gets weevils before I can use it up, because I only give them a handful a day.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

So long as the infestation isn't really heavy and the scratch does not begin to otherwise spoil such as going moldy it will be fine.

Since you're feeding so little you could just eliminate the scratch feed and go with something like bird seed that you can buy in smaller package sizes. You'd more easily be able to eliminate weevil infestations.

 

[Sjisty]

Do you have room in your freezer? I put extra feed in large ziploc bags, or even plastic grocery bags tied at the top and freeze them to keep it fresh and bug-free. Just a few days will kill the weevils, and you can just take out a small bag at a time.

 

[ButchGood]

Do you have room in your freezer? I put extra feed in large ziploc bags, or even plastic grocery bags tied at the top and freeze them to keep it fresh and bug-free. Just a few days will kill the weevils, and you can just take out a small bag at a time.

I'm kind of a prepper. I'm not a doomsday theorist or anything, but I do believe in stocking up and being prepared for emergencies. I like to stock up on chicken feed. 2 to 3 hundred pounds at a time for a flock of 20 or so chickens and 10 or so turkeys. Found some weevils today in my feed. I have 50 lbs of laying mash, 50 pounds of turkey feed and just a couple lbs of scratch. Scratch was too far gone. hauling it off tomorrow. I happen to have room in my chest freezer. I put the feed bags in some plastic bags, tied them up and put them in the freezer. Im gonna leave them in there for 24 hours and see how it looks. I may be in the market for an extra large chest freezer to store feed if it works well.

 

[ButchGood]

The freezer method worked like a charm.