How long is an open bag of Oxbow food good for?

[Justin5609]

I have 3 chins and we feed them Oxbow.. usually just buy a few bags of the 5lb at a time (All my local petsmart has) but the prices just went up and it'd be much cheaper to buy the 25lb bag off Amazon.

My only concern is once it's opened how long until it goes bad? I'm guessing it would take them about 3-4+ months to eat it all.

 

[tunes]

There should be a mill date on the bag. I have always been told (by manufacturers of Tradition) that it is good for 6 months past the mill date. Put it in an airtight, dry container and it will be fine. It doesn't instantly go bad, BTW, it just slowly starts to lose nutritional value.

 

[leaveittoweaver]

I've always been told with dog food that once the bag is opened you have about 6 weeks to use even in airtight container because nutritional value starts to degrade and the food becomes stale. Is this not true with chinchilla food?

 

[tunes]

I buy 40 bags at a time of feed. Ranchers buy hundreds. Neither of us tend to use them up within 6 weeks. When a nutritionist spoke at Nationals years ago, he said 6 months from the mill date.

 

[GandalfTheGreyChinchilla]

I would recommend using some sort of sealable food container.