How Much to Order
We are often asked how much feed a customer should order. There are many variables to consider, and you know your animals’ consumption best, but we encourage you to seriously consider shelf life and to order no more than three months of feed at a time. Our feeds age just as well as others, so technically you can order much more than three months, but we think that if you’re paying for great, fresh ingredients, you should get full value! Read on for more information about shelf life…
Shelf life depends on several things. The industry standard is that feed is good from 6 months of when it is bought, since you can't generally read the date on the tag or bag. We like to be more conservative and that may be one reason our feed performs so well. We like to see it used in 3 months, which is half the industry standard, but it doesn’t expire, per se. It's just that fresher is better, and we're committed to building the best.
It is very common to see feed for sale elsewhere that is a lot older than that. That is why most feed companies do not put a date of manufacture on their label but instead use a form of coding. Over time, appeal to animals drops and nutrition shifts because vitamins degrade.
Keep in mind that the physical form of the feed also makes a difference, as do storage conditions. The vitamins’ age and condition at the time of manufacturing all make a difference:
Ground and chopped grains deteriorate quickly just by coming into contact with oxygen in the air, so mash and ground feeds don't last long at all. Whole grains last a long time. Properly made pellets mimic the natural seed coat and keep ground feed materials from contact with the air and deterioration. Keeping your feed dry and keeping out rodents and dust and mold will prolong its life, but there is still the vitamin issue.
Fresh vitamins are so important! In the process of manufacturing feed, when the vitamin sources make physical contact with the feed materials and especially with the minerals, the vitamins begin to deteriorate. There's a physical chemical and electrical reaction between the vitamins, minerals, and other ingredients that degrades the vitamins right away, and it continues to degrade them until they are useless. So old feed might look okay, but you can bet that the vitamins are no good.
There's a 20% loss of nutritional value right at the point of manufacture. Because of that we formulate to 120% of the fresh vitamins we want in the final feed, so we end up at 100% of the vitamins' value when the feed goes into the bag. After that, a good rule of thumb to use is that the vitamins diminish at the rate of about 10% per month. The minerals are stable. So our fresh feed is at 100%, one month old feed is 90%, two month old feed is at 80%, and by 6 months the vitamins are half gone. (You can see why manufacturing with a 6-month-old vitamin premix is an immediate loss. You lose 20% right off, and continue losing at that 10% rate till the feed moves through the distribution chain and ends up in the animal. Our way is better.)
Also keep in mind that the industry standard is 6 months from when you buy it, but how long did a bag of feed sit in the manufacturer's warehouse, on the feed store shelf, and in the barn before it was used? Lots of feed stores will discount old feed; just remember, the vitamins are probably long gone.