If
you live as far as we do from the feed store, you’ll want to buy a
couple of feed sacks at a time. But how do you keep that chicken
feed dry and mouse-free until your flock’s ready to eat it?
Many people build a
storage compartment into their coops, but I
knew that an extra fifty pounds of weight would be enough to tempt me
to skip moving our chicken tractors a lot of the time. Instead,
we started out storing our chicken feed in plastic trash cans, which
were easy to move separately from our tractors as we pulled the flock across
the yard. The plastic lids started to spring leaks
after a couple of years, though, so we moved on to plan B —
metal. I have high hopes that this 31 gallon trash can (big
enough for 100 pounds of feed) will last longer.
Where do you store your
excess feed? I’d be curious to hear if
you have another solution that’s portable, water-tight, cheap, and
mouse-free.
How to store chicken feed
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About The Author
Anna & Mark
Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton are a pair of back-to-the-landers who have been homesteading for over a decade.
I store all my animal feed in a shed, stacked up on wood pallets (to avoid moisture wicking up out of the ground). I open one bag of each type at a time, and pour them into plastic garbage bins so it’s easy to scoop out. The lids clip down to keep out rodents.
I fill a bucket with feed before heading out to check/move the chickens. If I don’t end up using the whole bucketful, then I tip it back into the garbage bin.
Rat and mouse traps underneath the pallet keep rodents under control, and they’re out of the way so birds/chickens/ducks won’t get accidentally caught.
Sounds like a very good system! Even with your traps, I’m a bit surprised that your feed bags don’t get rodents — I wonder if Australia has a lower mouse pressure than the U.S.?