Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living What Do You Do With Your Feed Sacks?

I'm inundated with them this time of year.

Used to keep the paper ones to put nasty stuff in and throw in garbage. I kept a stack of them to light burn piles with too.

But with today's plastic type feed sacks, I don't really burn them much.

I use a few as trash bags, but mostly just cram one bag full of other ones and throw them away.


What do you guys do with your feed sacks?

We burn that sort of thing Barry, we "season" all the seed bags for about a year. Ya never know, they might get scarce, and of great value some day.

I miss burlap feed bags......

Hunts, I use to sell the empty burlap bags back for a dime each. That was in say, 1960, when spring thaws made flooding a threat. Sand bags.

I worked for an old woman farmer in the '80s.
And she loves burlap bags, wouldn't use the plastic ones.
Would go to auctions and buy any she could. Had an old Singer
in the grainery, and would sit in there and patch them.

They were nicer to handle.


We used to keep the plastic ones and reuse them when we got feed ground at the Farm Bureau.
Im told they cant allow a used bag on the premises after mad cow.
Now, they quit grinding there.

That's what we used to use when catfishin'...

Dip and old burlap feed bag in the water, and throw the catfish in. Keeps 'em cool and alive for hours.

It's a lost art, pulling the correct string to open those old bags. The new seed bags have a paper tag to let us know witch string to pull. Even then, sometimes I get the plyers out, and fight for a long time.

No bagged feed around here but we do use a fair amount of granular mineral that comes in those new, funky slick bags.

I just burn 'em with the net wrap. Light up an Ocasio BBQ about every 4-5 days.......

fill one up with sour soybeans and a rock to sink it and your catfish hole will improve a bunch

Used to sour milo in water and beer, and some corn. Then tie a line and anchor weight on it. Sink it in the catfish hole...

I save them and give them to a musher friend to pass around for collecting dog chit.
Landfill wants that stuff double bagged.

I use them for household trash. Bathrooms and kitchen have grocery bag collection, then to the feed bag.

We stuff other trash in them and take them to the baler at the county dump. Most of ours are mineral bags and they don't hold a lot of stuff.

I give them to someone that cleans seeds.

I had about a hundred burlap bags at one time, back when you went to the feed mill and had your feed ground and mixed. Quit using them when I started getting feed delivered bulk to the farm. I have no idea whatever happened to most of them. I think I gave some away.

These days I buy horse and chicken feed, and they come in paper bags, which I burn. The plastic bags that fescue seed comes in is good for gathering up trash around the barn. Had a neighbor who was sowing wheat one windy fall day, and was burning the bags, when the wind picked a burning one up and blew it into a field which them caught on fire and did quite a bit of damage. I always remember that when I'm burning paper bags, for some reason or another.

Yeah, I've seen those burning bags fill up with heated air, and go into the air like a burning Hindenburg...

I always stuff those bags in between branches when burning them now.

I'd buy cubes in bulk, but hate to spring for the storage of them. Not to mention the humidity factor and mold if you don't feed them right away down here.

Buying the cubes by the pallet (One ton per pallet), seems to keep then from molding. Plus, keeping them in a climate controlled feed room.

Cubes must be a western thing, as I've never seen them fed here. We do put out lick tubs, or if someone wants to get fancy, lick stations that hold a lot more. I will sometimes take an old gravity wagon and go to the feed mill, and buy a ton of feed in the bulk. I cover it with a tarp, and will feed out of that for a while if I have something that needs the feed.

If feed is on the cheap side, I'll put out creep feeders for the calves. But, if there's plenty of grass for the mama cows, and feed is high, I don't see a lot of benefit in creep feeding. Feed can go bad quick in the summer and especially in the high humidity we have here.

I've done, and seen done with seed bags, drive a stake through a stack on the ground, then set fire,


A few paper bags that have no seed treatment, our son and I use to wrap Christmas gifts. No kidding! My wife, of course, likes the pretty paper wrap.


To me if the wrap is worth more than the gift, somethin' wrong.

Gonna show my age here. but I remember when the flour companies sold flour in pretty sacks that the farm wives could make into dresses.

Both flour, and feed James. It has been many, and I do mean many years now. Well over fifty.

They often had to move a lot of bags on the stack to get down to the pattern the woman wanted.

I'm thinking the print bags went out in the early 50's?