Tossing out kibble..

I need some advice folks.... I was told by a few other dog lovers that kibble only stays fresh for about a month after the package has been opened. I buy the smallest bag of Canidae and Timberwolf Organics available but Toby never finishes an entire bag within a month... Once the bag has been opened for a month, I toss it out and purchase a new bag....

Does anyone else out there do this?

Hmm...I don't have that problem because Andy is a pig, but I don't think that would be necessary unless you felt the food was spoiled. How are you keeping it?? If you are worried about it staying fresh, you can get an air tight dog food container. Unless it looks moldy or smells funny, I won't throw it out.

Actually that's a waste of perfectly good food.

Get yourself some zip lock baggies and divide up the bag of food into several portions, for example weekly rations.

Compress them to get as much of the air out as possible, then zip them up and store in a cool, dry place. That way oxygen exposure is limited as much as possible and the food will be just fine.

You can also use a vacuum sealer like a Foodsaver and use vacuum packaging baggies or containers.

I use my vacuum sealer for repackaging the herbal blends I feed. They generally come in 2-pound bags but I only need 2 teaspoons a day, so if I left it all in the original bag, it would go stale long before it's used up.

Wal-mart shoppers unite!

The food saver is a great idea... personally I got a cereal container from wal-mart... its a tupperware like thing... holds 5 to 6lbs of kibble, has a air-tight lid, looks like a big plastic box of cereal and even has a pour spout.

They came in a set of 3 or 4 (4 I think?) for like $8.00 or something.. works great.

Thanks for the advice. I store Toby's kibble in a tupperware container.... I think the foodsaver is a great idea though!~ And dividing them up into weekly portions makes a lot of sense. Ok, time to go find a food saver....

Mordy- Do you have to have it in an air tight container?

Usually we got through a 33lb bag in a month, but sometimes it's a month and a half.

The idea of storing kibble sealed up air tight is that you want the extra food in containers that get opened as little as possible - meaning you wouldn't dump an entire 30+ pound bag into a container that you open at least once a day if the amount of food will last for a month or longer, since the more the food is exposed to air, the faster nutrients will break down and the faster it becomes stale.

So say you use 10 lbs of kibble per month and buy a 40 lb bag (which is much cheaper on a per-pound basis than smaller bags), if you divide that up into 3 vacuum sealed bags and one container for feeding, you have 30 pounds of food that are packaged airtight so they don't deteriorate.

And even in a container that you do open every day, it's best if it is air tight, since you don't want air to be circulating either.