Any remember when you had to know which string to pull?

No cheater tag.

Yep, still can do it and sometimes I buy feed without the cheater tag, Save the string too. miles

We feed about 2 tons of bagged feed week to live stock, been pulling the strings for years, but don't save the string or bags. Rio7

COOP here will not take back the feed sacks.
Some of the little independent mils used to buy them, but those mills are long since gone.
I saved the strings until I asked what I would do with 50 miles of string.

Feeding 2 tons a week makes me wonder if some sort of bulk buying/feeding would be easier/cheaper

I would think there would be no doubt. Unless you need to buy the grain bin/silo and feed hopper too. Then it's just a matter of running the cost versus time to see what makes cents (pun intended).

You can sometimes find used grain bins on-line.

Back when, in flood season, I sold burlap bags for a dime a piece.

Yep. 🤠

LouisB, It has proven out bagged feed, is cheaper than bulk and handier to feed out,for the critters we feed it to, we do have 6, 48,000# bulk tanks and 1, 18,000# bulk tank for horse feed, we feed 105,000# of bulk a month, our bulk feed wagons hold 6 1/2 ton and we pull them with a tractor, our bagged feed we feed with a wagon and a 4-wheeler,it's a lot quicker, Rio7

I feed bag feed too.

Much handier that buying and maintaining a hopper and a dedicated feed truck with a feeder on it.

I unload the pallets with my skid steer, and put them in the feed room, and only take what I need for the day.

You can tell if someone's a newbie by watching them open a bag of feed.

Yep. That’s the way we always did it. I’d have friends come over and when they’d go help me feed, they couldn’t open a range cube bag to save their ass. 🤠

RIO&
You are feeding a LOT of critters!

Feed prices are getting insane now too...

50# bag of the cubes I feed is $13 now.

Corn is over $10

Hell, everything has jumped up. Biden era inflation is going surpass the disaster caused by the Carter administration.

My fuel costs have increased over 56% since Trump left office.

Rockinbbar, Insane! You got that right, we sold our bird dogs down from 40 to 18, our horses from 28 to 14, and parked 3 ranch trucks, we don't feed corn but it's in almost every food or gas product we buy, these commie dimmorats and rino's are breaking our backs, Rio7

come on up Barry, I can get for you wholesale.

Locally produced pellets and bagged grains out of Delta is stitched without pull strips on their woven poly bags. Feed produced by Ak Mill in Anchorage, has the pull strips. The chicken flock raiser has gone up $ per bag in the last month. Glad we’re about ready to butcher.

I never was smart enough to figure them out - thank goodness for pocket knives.

I would if diesel hadn't gotten so high!

Holy chit, $13 on 50lbs is $520/ton!


That is about double what we pay for pellets or cubes delivered in bulk. 16% protein with a vitamin package.


And for us bulk is way handier.


But it comes down to whatever works for you.



We buy mineral by the pallet and that works great but we only use a maybe 10 bags a week.




Bought a pallet of net wrap last November for $5k, saved about $500. I don't even want to know what it would cost today...

Ha ha,

Miles, I mentioned saving the feed bag strings in Fireball's twine thread the other day.

Some learned things are hard to unlearn I guess.

I feed about 35 bags a day, about half with the string. Right to left, nothing to it. If I didn't feed four different species and 9 different feed sizes, I'd be all over bulk........

For those that do not know, the short end of the string is usually where to start. Not always, but usually. miles

Thanks Miles! I've forgotten so much.

I've been a feed manufacturer all my professional career and sold many thousands of bags of feed to our customers. However, I have fed very few bags of feed to our own livestock and poultry, almost all was bulk. So I didn't know that there was a proper method to pulling the strings on bags. The few times I did open bags I just tried one end, and if that didn't work the other end always did. Thanks for the education. Better late than never.

Thanks for the hint to pull the short end. I only open one or two bags a week (chickens), but couldn’t figure out a consistent method for string pulling. For the last couple years have just been cutting off both string-ends and pulling any string I can get a grip on. Usually works, but still once in awhile nothing works, so just use a knife to cut the &@$?!&$ open!

Have been opening near a ton of 50# and 25kg sacks per week for more than a few years.

The string bags ain’t so bad. You quickly recognize which side to start on. The worst was a malting house that didn’t sew their bags, but glued them. At some point they got some chatty glue and half the bags on a pallet would be failing at the seems before you even started to down stack them.

I hate that, I have three pallets of stitched bags right now I’m working through that we’re stitched poorly. Two with the tape, one without (different manufacturers). Some let go when you pick them up, some when they hit the bed of the pickup. A giant mess, either way. And at $35 to $40 per bag, enough to just make my day every single time.

To me, the old way is grabbing the end of the closure and just yanking up hard. The whole thing will just rip right off if your yank it hard enough.

When we were combining oats many years ago, we would sack the oats in burlap bags as they came out of a chute on the combine. It had two openings.While one was filling, we took the filled bag off and tied off the end with Miller's knot.No fancy stitching.I can remember what it looked like,but can't remember how to tie it.I do remember it came loose with just a pull of the string . Anyone ever use them?

As usual youtube is ones instructional friend

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IQpqzD2iyI