Going out of town and wondering what your favorite way is to prep grain for others to feed. Although I may just use it myself, too! Large Ziploc bags, Tupperware, other? What do you use to prepare meals in advance? Looking for something I can prepare and then anyone can toss and feed. Thanks!
I always use ziploc bags. They are a little bit annoying to fill, but they are easy to label and store. If you want to reuse them long term, buy the heavy duty freezer variety without sliders.
Tupperwear or Gladware is nice if you’re only going away a couple days, but it takes up a lot of space if you need to make meals for an extended period of time.
When my horse was on stall rest all my grain was bagged because the BM always over fed which wasn’t good when she wasn’t in work. I used heavy duty zip lock. I would get two different brands with different colored tops, one for am one for pm. I normally gotthree or four fills out of each bag before they started breaking. I normally fit two weeks, 14 days, into a twenty gallon trash can. It I could’ve I think tubberwear would have lasted longer but bags were easier to fit.
Giant ziplock bags with the date and meal written on them in permanent marker. Friday dinner, Saturday breakfast etc. If it’s longer than a week, actual dates.
I would make dinner and breakfast identiical.
Then figure out some bin to stack them in, in order.
Having the days written on means if you have several people taking turns they can see if he’s been fed that day.
The Gladware plastic containers that are cheaper than Rubbermade but studier than plastic bags. They are a bit sturdier and rodents can’t chew through them quickly. You can put masking tape on them and write labels (ie. Trigger - Monday AM feed) and then rip the labels off so they can be used again. They also stack easily, and if they get lost (only the lids get lost lol) they were cheap anyway. They come in different sizes. If you are feeding supps you can close them up and give them a good shake.
If I am traveling and someone else has to feed I put their meals in plastic bags and each horse gets a bucket that those bags go into.
For daily meal prep I just have three small buckets. Each bucket has a piece of (neon green) duct tape on it with the horse’s name on it. I put supplements and grain in there for that feeding. This makes it easier on the one night per week I am busy and Mr. Trub brings the heese in.
I use ziploc quart-sized bags & my farmsitter saves them so I get several uses (also lets me know all meals got fed ;))
I usually feed supplements AM, but to save labeling bags I just put 1/2 the amount in each bag.
Nothing is so critical it would matter if they get 1/2 doses 2X instead of all at once.
Bags get put into buckets labeled Horse, Pony, Mini
For shows I prebag grain too - makes life easier if I just have to dump a bag 2x daily,
And because my horses are spoiled, I include treats in the show bags,
Lord forbid they miss an evening cookie! :rolleyes:
Every Sunday I fill all my slow feed nets and 14 Ziploc bags of feed and supplements for my 2 horses - makes feeding before/after work super quick. I reuse the bags until the zippers die, usually that’s several months.
Mare gets senior feed & joint supplement, Easy keeper gelding gets SmartVite Thrive, Smart Bug-Off & Histall H supplements; he doesn’t need grain so I split his supplements into two “meals” since the mare needs twice daily feed. It’s pitifully little in his bucket, but he gets something so everyone’s content.
I hate the bag method… they end up just sliding all around and look super messy. I do the gladware tubs with the horse’s name and the day and am and pm. That way NOONE ever gets the wrong stuff at the wrong time. Unless you forget what day it is…
:love-struck:
Me too!
I make a weeks worth for my three horses.
(I thought I was the only crazy person who did this.)
I do not package my grain ahead of time though. (Only when I am going away.)
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I use ziplock bags year round, not for just when I have a farm sitter. I usually measure out 1-2 weeks at a time and store them in a rubbermaid bin.
I do use the freezer bags rather than the regular storage bags.
I add supplements first then grain, that way the sups get top dressed when the feed is dumped.
I have the horse’s names on the bags and am able to reuse them for quite a while. I fold them and place them in a canvas grocery bag.
I also pre bag my hay nets.
I do ziplocks year-round as well. As my guy is an easy keeper, he is just on an RB, with some extra flax, hoof supplement and Vit E, so I use the quart freezer bags and put the prepped bags in an old square supplement bucket. The barn feeders just empty the bag onto his soaked beet pulp (everyone gets soaked beep). We also reuse the bags - in the two and a half years I have been doing this I am still on my first box of bags.
If you are going on vacation, it isn’t a bad idea to label each bag and place them in order in a bin so the feeder(s) can make sure horsey gets fed each day. One person I knew who had multiple people caring for her horse (part-leaser, barn help and owner) taped a small calendar on the feed bin lid and attached a pen on a string. Each person marked off when they fed, so he didn’t get missed or fed twice.
I groom at a h/j barn and all of our clients make Ziplock bags for their horses, which are all stored in galvanized trash cans in the feed room. Most of them are labelled with the horse’s names (the only two that sometimes aren’t are both for horses owned by the same person, and I stack the bags based on where the stalls are when I feed so I only get confused when it comes to putting the bags back in the trash cans after feeding, and I figure that doesn’t matter too much lol).
Only one horse gets both am and pm grain, and they’re stored on opposite sides of the trash can so it’s easy to tell what’s what (the bags are also labeled am/pm).
Ziploc bags for my horse sitter and when I am on one the road with one
Ok, ziploc bags are still favorites, and I will definitely check out the gladware containers, too!
