Uses for feed bags

Now that I have significantly reduced my garbage, I have discovered my biggest source is feed bags.   I am talking about the paper ones with the plastic like coating.   What uses do they have besides mulch?

Our local feed company switched from all paper feed bags to plastic coated ones and the uproar was sufficient to get them to switch back. Using plastic lined bags for anything but garbage seems like a bad idea to me - too much micro-plastic to deal which I'm already trying to reduce on my land.

I will not suggest you starve your animals, but maybe you can come up with some permie alternatives to the amount of feed they're getting? Yes, chicken pellets are easy, but consider if there are other, less processed options that might come in different packaging or a different brand?

Hi Jay,

I have commented before about having a large farmer as a neighbor.  I have been careful regarding how many times I go to the well out of fear of becoming a pain in the backside.   I am considering trying to buy directly from him.  

What makes this interesting is that in the past he has been extremely considerate.   This leads me to believe that he might attempt some organic crops to develop direct sales to an alternative market.

Still, I am interested in alternative uses for feed bags.

I use them to collect recycling on my walks.

I use them as trash bags. Our landfill accepts them in place of purchased plastic trash bags, so that's one more item I don't have to buy.

I just remembered this! Instructables has a tutorial for using them to make a Feed Bag Tote Bag.



(Except, this isn't the kind you're talking about.)

Feed bags here are pretty thin plastic no use for anything other than bin liners and since they invariably have holes in.. not much use for that! Since ours are plan clear plastic they can go in the recycling along with the hundreds of wood pellet bags we generate each year.

Skandi Rogers wrote: Since ours are plain clear plastic they can go in the recycling along with the hundreds of wood pellet bags we generate each year.

Yes, plain plastic or plain paper are easier to recycle than the mix of the two. When some of the mixed ones landed in my compost accidentally, I had to try to gently pull it out without the ultra-thin plastic breaking up too much. I wonder if the worms would selectively eat the paper off the mixed style of bag? I was using a regular compost, rather than a worm-specific one.

and wrote:

since they invariably have holes in.. not much use for that!

I used to get rabbit pee/poop contaminated bedding from a lady who was struggling to keep it out of the land-fill. The thin garbage bags she used didn't survive well, but I found if I doubled them so that the holes didn't line up, that enabled me to get a second use out of most of them.

I'm thinking of using mine as earth bags to build a shed.  As long as they aren't exposed to UV, I think they would work well, so I would want to save up enough of them for the walls, and then build the walls and cover them in as short a time as possible.  They are pretty tough.  I use them to hold charcoal that I crush by running over and over it with my pickup and they can withstand that, they should be able to withstand a one-time tamping on a wall.

This is what I did with my feedbags this trick or treat.

I reuse plastic feed bags to gather mulch when I'm out, like pine straw, or grass clippings from random lawns. They also work to corral random bits of kindling, or to carry around garden tools when I'm too lazy to fix the wheelbarrow tire. They can also be more efficient than a wheelbarrow for moving compost or manure, since you get more accuracy when applying and you save shovel strokes (once to load, none for unloading).

Translucent plastic feed bags make a dandy mini-greenhouse for tomato plants.

I have plenty of dog food bags which are reasonably sturdy (we have big dogs). I use them for shop/yard waste since they don't perforate like trash bags, and empty them for reuse. On the way home they are often refilled with free municipal compost or wood mulch.

I also use these bags to supply biochar and tasty garden bits to my neighbours who keep laying hens. We get some surplus eggs and don't have to hassle people about returning our pails (they always forget).

I use my feed sacks as the lining in my pallet hotbed gardens so that the soil and goat bedding don't fall through.  

I have a small horse farm in the CT River Vally area. Fortunately, my bedding bags are eligible for a Trex recycling program our town participates in, however my feed bags are not. I’ve been hoarding them and waiting for inspiration to strike because I hate to add them to our landfills. Last spring I verified they’re made of a food grade plastic!  I decided to use them as grown bags for our potato crop, and it worked out very well. Our plant yields weren’t as abundant as those of our traditionally grown crops, but the convenience of growing in bags was a fair trade off IMO. I was able to grow potatoes right over our leaching field, which normally wouldn’t be used to grow veggies. It also became a great permaculture conversation starter in my town. People who saw them not only inquired about what they were, they asked if I had extras to share as well. A win in my book! 🙂

I know this is not exactly answering the question directly, but depending on the kind of feed, and how much room you have in a shed or garage... you might consider buying in bulk. This can often be cheaper if you need a certain amount of feed. It also creates far less waste compared to the same amount of feed, but bagged in lots of little bags instead of one big bag. I've seen people like Justin Rhodes get a 1000lb on a pallet. When I had chickens, 30 of them were eating around 45lb a week. So, while 1000lb sounds like a lot, it would have been about 6 months or so of food for just 30 chickens.

I've been folding mine up for a year now, waiting for inspiration to strike.

Just last week, I unfolded a couple and used them as table cloths for woodworking glue-ups. The glue doesn't fall off, but it does come off pretty easy. Keeps the glue off my tablesaw - that seems to be the only table that is regularly cleared off.


I have been using them for the trash bags for the garage. The medium ones work well in a 5 gallon bucket. I haven't figured out a good way to close them up yet.

I have a few of these filled with wood shavings from woodworking - Jointer and surface planer. I scoop the mess on the floor into a bag and smush it down and repeat. Not as dense as the shavings from the farm store, but I save my $6 between maybe 3 refilled bags.

I suspect they will make decent plastic sheet mulch for gardens if that's is the path you are taking.

Jenn White wrote: Last spring I verified they’re made of a food grade plastic!  I decided to use them as grown bags for our potato crop, and it worked out very well. Our plant yields weren’t as abundant as those of our traditionally grown crops, but the convenience of growing in bags was a fair trade off IMO. I was able to grow potatoes right over our leaching field, which normally wouldn’t be used to grow veggies. It also became a great permaculture conversation starter in my town. People who saw them not only inquired about what they were, they asked if I had extras to share as well. A win in my book!  

I really like this idea.  Gonna try it with blueberry plants.

What I have been doing with my feed bags is lining the walls of my drafty barn.  It was originally a tobacco barn, then converted to a hog barn, then double-walled stalls were built to convert it to a horse barn, but the exterior walls were still vertical boards with about a half-inch gap between them, like they'd intended to do board and batten but skipped the battens.  The exterior was never painted, so the boards are too weathered and warped to add battens now.  Stapling the split open feed bags on the inside walls keeps the wind and rain from blowing through and is a lot cheaper than tar paper or house wrap.  I overlap the bags by 6-inches in each direction.  I had converted one stall to a chicken coop, and my chickens seem to be happier without the wind ruffling their feathers.

I had a stack of them piling up in the garage; wasn't sure what I was going to do with them. I ended up using a couple to collect the garden stakes that I made last year by cutting up ~1" diameter branches of brush that I was clearing, so they didn't lay in the garden all winter and rot on me. My larger use showed up last week when we started mixing some really old chicken bedding and black dirt to make potting soil. Probably (partially) filled about 20 bags. I could only fill them about halfway or they were too heavy to handle.

Matt McSpadden wrote:I know this is not exactly answering the question directly, but depending on the kind of feed, and how much room you have in a shed or garage... you might consider buying in bulk. This can often be cheaper if you need a certain amount of feed. It also creates far less waste compared to the same amount of feed, but bagged in lots of little bags instead of one big bag. I've seen people like Justin Rhodes get a 1000lb on a pallet. When I had chickens, 30 of them were eating around 45lb a week. So, while 1000lb sounds like a lot, it would have been about 6 months or so of food for just 30 chickens.

Just be aware that grains have a shelf life. The University of IL says that prepared grains/feeds have a shelf life of about 3 months before the vitamins and minerals start to degrade. The usual estimate for feed consumption (which will vary based on breed and what kind of forage they have available) is 1/4lb a day. At that rate, you would need 44 birds to eat 1,000lbs in 90 days.

We live on a hill, and our driveway can get really icy in winter. So, I collect dry grit from the roadsides in spring, store it in dog food bags to keep it dry in the summer, and use it on my driveway for traction. Keeping it dry is really important; otherwise it's a 100 lb. frozen brick.

So many clever ideas in this thread. I don't buy feed. However since we agreed to let our neighbors construct a fence, we no longer are able to accommodate bulk compost/soil delivery which means having to buy bags. Currently I use them as trash bags, and for transporting any extra compost/mulch/leaves we scrounge up. I am considering using them to line a few pallet planters as a lazy alternative to actually fixing the gaps. About to embark on a tiny microgreens business and foresee many bags in my future 😪.

We use them for rock bags to hold down silage tarps and ground cover cloth. They last a few years that way.

My cracked corn for chickens comes in woven white plastic bags (why would plastic be woven? I don't know but it looks woven). Dog food comes in plastic bags or sometimes the paper/plastic  you're talking about. Sunflower seeds for the chickens come in either paper or plastic. 50# bags of flour for us co mes in paper. The paper bags I open up with a scissors and use them like cardboard under hay as mulch. The plastic bags I use for gathering leaves along our mile-long lane, a project that takes me much of the winter (I shred and turn most of the leaves into leafmold which my vegetables love). I also sometimes use them for hauling goat manure/hay...in my car...some people got no respect for their vehicle. They gradually wear out, with the woven kind springing holes and fraying and the stiff plastic kind opening on the bottom seam. Then they're just garbage, and can't be recycled because they're too dirty. The paper/plastic hybrids are the hardest to use and can't be recycled--I use them for garbage bags. Fortunately I don't get too many of these as we don't generate much landfill garbage. And I ended up with several huge heavy plastic garbage bags, bought to accommodate oyster mushroom totems--they have enough spawn residue that I can't use them for other purposes so I suppose I have a decade's worth of garbage bags.

@Benedict Bosco

Thanks for the info. I knew grains/feed had a shelf life, but I did not know it was so short before it began to degrade.

Also, my chickens were on pasture. In the winter they ate feed, in the summer less. So I could stretch that amount of feed a bit longer.

Jenn White wrote:...I decided to use them as grown bags for our potato crop, and it worked out very well. Our plant yields weren’t as abundant as those of our traditionally grown crops, but the convenience of growing in bags was a fair trade off IMO. I was able to grow potatoes right over our leaching field, which normally wouldn’t be used to grow veggies. It also became a great permaculture conversation starter in my town. People who saw them not only inquired about what they were, they asked if I had extras to share as well. A win in my book! 🙂

Fantastic ideas -- I am going to use some of mine for potatoes and growing other plants.  Someone else mentioned using them for tomato greenhouses.  Both are great ideas!

Matt McSpadden wrote:... you might consider buying in bulk. This can often be cheaper if you need a certain amount of feed. It also creates far less waste compared to the same amount of feed, but bagged in lots of little bags instead of one big bag. I've seen people like Justin Rhodes get a 1000lb on a pallet. When I had chickens, 30 of them were eating around 45lb a week. So, while 1000lb sounds like a lot, it would have been about 6 months or so of food for just 30 chickens.

I was just remembering yesterday how we bought bagged feed in bulk like you described years ago.  I think I'm going to ask my feed store if they would sell that way.  Can't hurt to ask!

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:...We might try snow trap or wind barrier, just to give them one more use:  Plant 2 posts and slip the bag, turned inside out over the 2 poles. Repeat. you would get a white barrier. The obstruction would only be as tall as the bag, but that may be all you need for a snow trap or for protecting wildlife...

Something like that would work as a wind barrier for gardens, too.  In New Mexico USA where I live the wind blows hard in the spring and pretty hard a lot of the rest of the year.  I'm thinking that young plants in particular would benefit from wind blocks.

Lif Strand wrote:

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:...We might try snow trap or wind barrier, just to give them one more use:  Plant 2 posts and slip the bag, turned inside out over the 2 poles. Repeat. you would get a white barrier. The obstruction would only be as tall as the bag, but that may be all you need for a snow trap or for protecting wildlife...

Something like that would work as a wind barrier for gardens, too.  In New Mexico USA where I live the wind blows hard in the spring and pretty hard a lot of the rest of the year.  I'm thinking that young plants in particular would benefit from wind blocks.

Using them as a wind barrier or to shade tomato plants certainly would work. Here, young cabbage plants would be protected from cut worms if you could sink it about 2" in the ground too. I love this thread. I think possibilities are endless.

One of the issues I've always had is storing the bags.  If they're just piled up until you can think of something to do with them, then they slide off each other and eventually the pile takes up a lot of room.

I tried stuffing them inside other bags, but that doesn't really compress them so that space is saved.  So I came up with the idea of tying them in bundles.  Great, but they are hard to flatten.  So then I came up with this method of flattening them until I tie them.  All I do is straighten out the bags and the press them under pallets.  There are about 20 bags under the pallet in the forefront, so you can see the system works very nicely.  When the pile of bags get too high  I use baling twine to tie them neatly and then pile the bundles into stacks elsewhere.  

Not only does this method result in saved space, but the neat bundles are more appealing for anyone else who's looking to do a project with bags.  They end up taking more of them than if they're loose.

I use used feed bags to store grain that I scrounge or buy from farmers. I don't have a setup to do bulk grains so I store everything in bags. It's the mini bulk bags I am having a hard time finding a way to reuse, as the feedmill will not touch a used one and I don't have the means to move a full one.

When I lived in the south you could go buy oats in bulk at this big silo place where the train came through.  You just brought your truck and they opened this hopper and just DUMPED oats in the back.  They weighed your truck before and after. Then when I got home, I would shovel out the oats with a snow shovel and into 55 gallon barrels with lids.  It lasted a really long time for the horses. It didn’t have any molasses so they had to get used to it 😂.

I think you could make bags with handles - like the kind that people use to put groceries in instead of one use plastic bags.
Or perhaps reuse them as planters for potatoes, or some other vegetable that is good in containers - you could even hang them to save space - I've seen tomatoes grown like this, and cucumbers. on youtube.

Just some ideas.

Most of the ones we get with chicken feed are of the woven plastic design.  We have found that these are definitely not UV stable and will disintegrate if left exposed for less than a season.  

But they seem to be of the same material as the rice bags often used for earthbag building.  No doubt they could be used for this as long as you were prompt in covering them -the rice bags are susceptible in the same way.

Could they work for sandbags in floods? There would be some water that passes through since they are not watertight, [just like regular sandbags], but that could buy precious time, no?
A town that is prone to flooding could make an appeal for bags.
Could they be used in a water filtering system to prevent the bigger debris from passing through? The water downstream of the bags should be cleaner...[?]
The main advantage is that they are free once the feed is out of them and they wouldn't go to the dump.
I also have a question about planting in them, but perhaps, underground, they might not fall apart quickly enough: How about planting trees in them, or would the bags impede root development? Could that work for ease of handling?

I use my empty bird feed bags as toppers for my germination/planting station on my porch. I cut the bottom end open, slice down one side and turn them print side down under all of my containers. This looks decent and it keeps the water off of my OSB board below the plastic.

My plastic shopping bags are re-used to collect the cat poop from my automated pooper-scooper with the tops tied and dropped into the trash. The shopping bags are also used for anything and everything including wrapping paint brushes between breaks, hauling jars of jam to neighbors, collecting veggies from the garden, and even taking the overage not used to the local good-will type stores for their customers use.