If you run a farm, it is very important to store your stock feed correctly. Read on to find out why.

To keep your livestock healthy

It can be both stressful and expensive to deal with sick livestock. If one or more of your animals develop an illness, you may have to pay for a vet to examine and treat them. Following this, you may then have to spend a considerable amount of time monitoring and medicating them, so as to ensure that they make a full recovery.

As such, it is sensible to do everything you can to minimise the risk of your livestock developing diseases. One simple but highly effective way to do this is to be careful about the way in which you store the food that your animals eat.

For example, by making sure that the storage container or shed in which your stock feed is kept is fully sealed, with no holes which rats and mice could potentially crawl through, you can reduce the chances of the stock feed becoming contaminated with rodent droppings and urine, both of which are known to transmit dangerous pathogens that can cause serious illnesses in those who are exposed to them.

Similarly, by making sure that the bins that you store your stock feed are completely dry and airtight, there will be far less chance of toxic mould spores growing on the surface of this food (as mould requires both oxygen and moisture in order to survive).

To ensure that your farming business remains profitable

If as a result of being improperly stored, your stock feed is damaged or stolen, the profitability of your farming business could decline.

For example, if the shed where you keep your stock feed bins is secured only by a cheap, flimsy padlock, it would be all too easy for a thief to break this lock, gain entry to the shed and steal the stock feed.

In this situation, you would not only have to waste your workday reporting this theft to the police and filing a report but also would have to spend your time and money re-ordering new stock feed and repairing any damage the thief inflicted on the shed. This type of incident could end up costing you hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Likewise, if your stock feed becomes inedible because you stored it in a warm, damp shed that encouraged the growth of mould, you would have to arrange for the disposal of this feed and pay for replacement feed to be delivered. Again, this could be very costly and time-consuming.

Unexpected expenses of this kind could have a very negative impact on your enterprise's profitability and could even potentially leave you with major debts.

Given this, it is critical to ensure that your stock feed is stored in such a way that the risk of it being damaged or stolen is minimal.