Wondering how to keep animal feed stored? Read on for just how to store animal feed to keep it secure and pest free.

When you have a number of animals on your homestead farm, you have to figure out how to store animal feed. If you have enough animals, I suppose you could have a silo.

You could call the feed mill and get them to deliver your feed mix and dump it right into the silo. Silos are expensive though.

Maybe you don’t have enough animals to make getting a silo worth while. Or maybe, like me, you are a cheap Dutch girl. Here’s what we do.

DIY Feed Bin – Use a freezer to store animal feed

 

We go to the local shopping mall (also known as the local DUMP) and shop for freezers. When people get a new deep freeze, what do they do with the old one?

In our area they bring them to the dump and then we get feed storage freezers for free. We don’t care if the freezer works or not. We won’t be plugging it in – it will sit down at our barn in the breezeway area.

These old broken appliances do a great job at keeping our feed stored!

 

We buy our bags of feed at the local feed store (because even though we would love to provide 100% of the feed for our animals off of our own land….well, we can’t.)

It’s far too cold for gardening in winter here.

 

Information on animal feed storage guidelines

Whether you have goats, chicken flocks, pigs or sheep, follow these basic guidelines for storage.

You should have a designated building or space that can be locked for animal feed storage. This area should protect your feed from rain and other inclement weather patterns with a secure roof.

Livestock feed should be kept in a dry place out of direct sunlight and out of any chance of exposure to rain or dew.

Create ventilation areas that are low on the ground so the wind and rain can’t get at the feed containers. This ventilation can even be tiny holes in the bottom of your storage building.

 

 

Keep the area clean where you plan on storing your animal feed. This will help ensure the safety of your food so that mold or mildew doesn’t grow within the storage shed. Plus it will keep down the risk of pests getting inside to steal animal feed.

Always use any broken containers of animal feed first so the food is fresh and you’re not wasting money and feed from an accidentally broken bag or container.

Lastly, make sure your newer animal feed deliveries are placed behind your current feed. Consider making small stacks of sacks of animal feed within your food storage space to deter insects from getting into your food supply.

Pest Protection

Don’t forget to place a mesh or similar protective material over the ventilation holes to prevent field mice, rats, squirrels and other small creatures from getting into your animal feed storage shed. The material used should be breathable so the ventilation works properly.

Keeping your feed free from all types of pests is one of the most important aspects of feed storage. You do not want pests able to get at that feed, either by nibbling on the bags or getting into the feed bins.

Once you have a pest infestation, you are now having to deal with things such as rodent traps, poisons, etc. to get rid of them. It is far easier to just make sure in the first place that your bins are completely pest proof and your feed stored correctly.

Speaking of pests, check out our easy way to kill wasps and hornets!

Shelf life of purchased animal feed 

The shelf life of purchased animal feed will vary from region to region. The general rule of thumb for the shelf life of purchased animal feed is:

• 1-3 months for ground ingredients
• 3-6 months for whole grain and oilcakes
• 1-2 months for compounded dry feeds
• 6 months for vitamin mixes when kept in a cool storage area
• 2-3 hours for wet ingredients
• 2-3 months for frozen materials

Moisture levels necessary for safely storing animal feed

You’d ideally like to keep the humidity at 10-12% inside your animal feed storage space. I know this is difficult in extremely humid regions, so if your humidity level is around 75%, just note that the shelf life of animal feed may be lower.

Fungi can grow in areas that have a moisture content of 15% or higher. Do your best to keep the moisture level of your animal feed storage space lower than that. This will be ideal for a maximum shelf life time.

Storing Chicken Feed Outside

After going to the local feed store, we bring the bags of feed home and put it into the freezers. Here’s the mix that we feed to our laying hens.

It’s 16% lay pellets, wheat and cracked corn. We try to buy 10 bags at a time, as we get a discount for 10 bags or more.

 

 

Here’s one of our deep freezers. Since it has a “shelf” on one side, I can store my empty egg cartons in there. This makes it easy to gather eggs every day.

In Winter, I usually come to the barn with a jug of water in one hand and kitchen leftovers in the other. I have no extra hands to carry an egg carton down with me. 

Into this deep freeze, I will empty one bag of lay pellets. Then I will add one bag of wheat and give it a good mix with my hands. Then I add one bag of the corn and mix it all together again. 

We keep oyster shell separately for the chickens. Often we just feed eggshells back to them, which works very well but you have to make sure the shells are crushed very fine.

 

 

Storing Pig Feed Outside

In the other deep freezers, we keep extra unopened bags of feed. Once late Spring hits and we get our weaner pigs, their feed goes into the big ones and the hens feed goes in one of the smaller ones.

We do it that way so we can order in lots of bags of chicken food to have on hand before we have too much snow. It gets more difficult moving feed to the barn when there is several feet of snow.

 

 

We have a third freezer down there. While we are raising meat birds, this freezer will hold their feed.

Meat birds are fed a different ration of feed than laying hens. Meat birds get 20% protein feed in order to get them growing quickly.

 

In the off season, we use this freezer to store things like extra heat lamps and bulbs, the large chicken waterers and the extra feeders.

These are all clean when we put them in the freezer for storage.

Once the meat birds are butchered, we wash and bleach out all the containers and then rinse them very well. I like to leave them out in the sun to air dry.

Other Ideas For Storing Animal Feed

If finding and claiming old freezers from the local dump isn’t an option for you, there are a number of other ways you can store your animal feed, depending on the climate where you live and the predators from whom you are protecting the food.

Basically, you need a place that will protect your feed from the sunlight, is either airtight or properly ventilated (to keep it from growing mold, etc.). It should also be easily accessible, neat and well-organized.

Some great options for livestock feed storage containers are:

An Old Refrigerator

Old fridges work well for storing food, however our personal preference is to use the freezers. If you use a fridge, just lay it on its back on some old pallets. Then add your feed. You could use the smaller freezer compartment for holding oyster shell.

Metal Trash Cans for Rodent Proof Feed Bins

Ideally, you want large trash cans (at least large enough to hold the feed you want to store in them) with well-fitting lids. Metal cans are a great option since they are less likely to be chewed through by mice and other animals.

But sturdy plastic trash cans are reasonably chew-resistant and their lids often fit more snuggly.

Bungee cords are always a good idea! Use these to make your feed containers even more secure.

Other Roomy Boxes

There are many other types of boxes and containers that can pull double-duty as livestock food storage containers, depending on your needs.

Some examples are old toolboxes or tackle boxes, large restaurant bread boxes, large cargo boxes, and even old sewing boxes if they are large enough.

Basically, any box that has enough room and a lid of some sort will work. If it isn’t very sturdy, you’ll want to keep it in a more protected environment, like a garage, shed, or larger storage bin.

 

 

Make Your Own Storage Bins

Making your own storage bin gives you the opportunity to design it to perfectly fit your needs. You can create the outside walls of your bin out of anything from wooden boards to concrete blocks.

Cover it with a hinged, locking lid that you build, or simply a large piece of tarp. You can even leave it uncovered if it is under some form of shelter from the weather (like a back porch).

Inside the House or Garage

One option that works particularly well is to simply keep your animal feed inside your house or garage. If your storage options are quite limited, this may be the best solution.

One positive: Since it is inside your home, you won’t have to worry as much about keeping pests and predators out of it.

One negative: Since it is inside your home, if pests or predators DO find your food source, they will now be inside of your home.

But you will still be more likely dealing with annoyances like ants or mice, rather than larger and potentially dangerous animals.

And ideally, if you keep your animal feed inside another container with a lid, it should greatly reduce the chances of other creatures finding it in the first place.

Silos

And last, but not least – there is that big old silo we discussed earlier. If you have the need to store several tons of grain or wheat and have the money to spend, a silo is a great luxury. And it looks cool, too!

 

Find out here – How to Grow Your Own Livestock Feed (this is how we grow feed for free during summer and fall)

Grow Fodder for your Livestock – feed them all winter!

Want to make your own Natural Herbal Dewormer – here’s how.

 

Several different ideas for how to store animal feed in your barn or garage! Work towards keeping your feed stored properly.

 

 

 

Originally published 2011; latest update September 2022

Learn how to grow your own animal feed and save thousands of dollars in feed costs.

 

 

It would be almost impossible for us to grow 100% of the feed we need for our animals here on our homestead. But we can grow a lot of it – here’s how we grow our own animal feed for:

• goats
• cattle
• hogs
• sheep
• rabbits
• chickens

Since we live in the North, we have a short growing season and a long cold snowy winter. But we do grow what we can.

 

 

Our pigs and chickens have their own garden here in the Valley and they even do some of the work in there for us. We offset a lot of the feed costs and you can too. Here is how to grow your own animal feed.

How to grow your own animal and livestock feed

 

 

The Animal Garden has about 3000 sq feet of veggies grown mostly for our pigs and chickens. (I say mostly because I’m not above going down there and forking up a nice bunch of carrots or beets to sell  at the Farmers Market  if I’m running out of those in the Main Garden.)

I plant my seeds and seedlings very close together to help keep down the weeds. As the plants grow we can thin them out and feed the them to the animals. Over time we are picking larger thinnings and still letting the other plants grow.

 

 

Because the vegetables are going to the animals, we don’t always have to pick them fresh in their prime. The larger the plants get, the less feed we have to buy. Over the season, this adds up to hundreds of dollars.

 

 

In this garden we have collards, broccoli, carrots, potatoes, swiss chard, mangels and sugar beets. Many of these are later season vegetables, so we pick seasonally to feed the pigs and chickens.

 

 

By September we have finished the chard and broccoli and still have the mangels, beets, carrots and potatoes to feed off. Often we will feed these root crops off to the pigs until mid November when they are butchered.

 

 

Feeding Pigs from the Livestock Garden

We have a woodstove down at the barn. Every day during the season, we fire up the stove with canners on top full of veggies.

How long the food lasts depends on how many pigs we have. When we had 6, we fed one full canner load in the morning and another in the evening.

 

 

Just some of the veggies picked for a meal including beets, sugar beets, rutabagas, turnips and mangels. We try to fill one wheelbarrow a day – this will fill two canners to the top and then some.

 

 

That’s a whole lot of natural organic livestock feed right there! Think of how delicious this meat will be since it has no chemicals or preservatives, plus the pigs have been eating healthy fresh garden vegetables.

 

 

We chop the leaves off to give to our the hens. They also get some of the cooked vegetables too, but they love all the leaves fresh.

They make quick work of them – when it’s hot and sunny out, I bring the leaves into the coop or at least into the shade for them, so they don’t wilt as fast.

Sometimes I tie a big bundle of the leaves and hang it upside down for them to grab at. They love that and it keeps them entertained – they eat every bit!

 

 

The roots and stalks go off to the pigs. They will eat them raw, but if you feed potatoes they should be cooked.

Don’t ever feed potato or tomato leaves to your livestock; put those leaves on the compost and they will be fine for decomposing. But animals and humans should not eat them.

One canner will get fed to these 3 pigs in late afternoon along with their grain. The other will be fed the following morning with their breakfast grain.

 

 

Pigs really enjoy garden vegetables. It’s good for them and it gives their pork a wonderful flavour. When we eat pork from pigs we have raised and pastured, we KNOW what we are eating.

More importantly we not what we are not eating – chemicals or preservatives.

 

 

Nothing but awesome naturally raised pork. And the pigs have had a wonderful life while they are with us. They get to run and play, wallow in the mud and sleep in the shade of the willows.

 

 

There is labour involved in growing an Animal Garden, there is no way around that. But, if you put in the time you can grow your own animal feed for the cost of the seeds.

Other crops to grow for animal feed include:

• hay (for over winter; in summer they can graze on fields of grass, clover and alfalfa)
• sunflowers (chickens especially love sunflower seeds added to the chicken feed)
• pumpkins
• all kinds of greens, including collards and kale
• dent corn
• soybeans

 

Using Pigs and Chickens to Clean up your Garden

Come late Fall just prior to butchering, let your pigs into the Animal Garden. They will clean up whatever you have left for them. They’ll root up the soil again tilling it with their noses.

They’ll add fertilizer too for the following year. Chickens can be let in after your garden is well established. When seedlings are young, they are a temptation to chickens and they will massacre your garden in a very short time.

By mid-summer, you should be able to let your chickens in there to gather some of their own food.

 

 

If you are concerned about them doing too much damage, you could put them in your garden about 2 hours before dusk. When dusk rolls around, the chickens will most likely already be back in their coop.

 

 

Start to grow your own animal feed – you will be surprised at how much money you can save. Let your animals do some work for you while they are with you. They love to work and you will love the benefits of their labor.

More Country Living articles you may be interested in:

Need to figure out how to store your livestock feed? Here’s 5 different ways!

Want to start selling produce at your local Farmer’s Market? Take a look at this article and my ebook.

Want to feed your chickens much cheaper over winter? Here’s how to grow fodder for chickens.

Everything you want and need to know about Raising Pigs for Meat in your backyard.

Want to get some chickens so you can have fresh eggs? Here’s all you need to know.