Unstabilized Ground flax goes rancid at a rate that is dependent upon the temperature and humidity. I tried buying 50# bags years ago, and it was a bust. I use whole, and grind up two cups in a blender AM/PM. Great results, and easy.
@4LeafCloverFarm I’ve only run across one rancid bag of ground flax in … decades of winding up with a bag here and there, and working in barns where it’s been fed.
Having ALL the fat in it go rancid is different than optimal omega 3 utilization. The omega 3 oxidizes quickly. The rest of the fats don’t go rancid particularly quickly or easily.
I have a bag in the barn right now that still smells fresh and nutty. I bought it sometime in the summer. The feed store loaded the wrong thing and it’s just too much hassle to take it back. The omega 3 is probably all or mostly oxidized but the rest of the fats are fine.
@Simkie is climate not a factor as well - for the non-stabilized ground flax going bad? And I mean unfeedable, gross, nasty, not just loss of nutrients when I say “going bad”.
Because there is huge difference in climate between CT and TN. Having lived in both places myself (Wilton, CT for 12 years, various places in TN for nearly 40), our chart-busting 100 days over 90° this year here in Middle TN couldn’t be rivaled in CT… not even close. So when it comes to things that can easily go bad like rice bran or what we’re talking about, ground flax, is having a stabilized product not prudent for climates like mine?
My feed room isn’t climate controlled. Its actually open to the loft above (has no ceiling) and I never got around to installing a proper window, so there is big opening to the outside where the window should be. It can get up to 92°/93° inside my barn, including the feed room, so in summer I don’t empty more than a single bag of any type of feed into my feed bins.
Once we get cooler (daytime highs in 60s - and we are finally getting there now), then I feel comfortable having 2+ bags of feed in each side of the feed bin with no worry it will go bad.
However, all that said, I do tend to be a worry-wart and over think things frequently enough, so perhaps I’m being over-cautious in selecting the TC Naturals Golden Flax vs the non-stabilized ground flax from the mill that the Co-Op can get.
Yes, sure, absolutely. Hot and humid makes stuff go bad faster. But it gets warm here, too, and we have quite a lot of stretches of 90+ and humid. (Climate has changed so much in the last 25/30 years, summers here may be pretty different than you remember?) I’ve lived in other places with hot summers, too, and ground flax still does not go bad overnight at those temps. I’ve still only seen one bag in my years of horse keeping (including through roasting summers) that was RANCID. And I suspect that has more to due with storage at the mill and/or feed store, as it was clearly bad when I picked it up.
Yes, I think you’re better off with the stabilized stuff, but I’m not at all surprised that your local feed store sells unstabilized ground flax. You don’t need to be feeding it to huge herds of food animals to get through the bag before it’s bad. It’s not like wrapped hay that MUST be fed within a few days of opening. In most scenarios, it will be fed before it’s rancid. But, there’s probably not much omega 3 happening, based on what we know about how fragile that is.
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I was in CT in the late 70s through the end of the 80s. So, yes, it was a while ago. So sorry to hear that even summers up there are more heat prone. I can remember often needing a sweater at night, even in July. We usually had snow by Halloween. I often reminisce about the lovely summers in CT when we’ve got 105° with 85% humidity here!
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Yeah, that’s not at all what it’s been like for the past couple years! Seems it’s like that everywhere, though, huh? Where I grew up (about that same timeframe) is SO much warmer and more humid than when I was a kid. Crazy, isn’t it? I think I read that most of the US has grown warmer by one planting zone in the last 30/40 years? Something like that? :eek: :eek:
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I used to get ground flaxseeds in bulk from Seminole feeds but it made my Tb mare and German boy fat. So did the Buckeye flaxseed product. So I switched to getchia off of eBay and got more omega3s and use it whole with no passing thru the horses as the whole flaxseed I started out feeding did.
Erm, if you’re feeding the same amount as flax, it’s pretty likely that the chia is just passing through the horse where the flax was getting digested. Hence the weight gain. They are very similar in calorie count. And flax has more omega 3 than chia.
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