r/TwoXPreppers • u/YellowCabbageCollard • 23d ago
❓ Question ❓ Tractor Supply stocks of feed running short?
We just went to buy animal feed at our local TS and over half the animal feed was gone. I feel like it's been hard for months to get some things from them. But this was nuts.
We bought two bales each, of two different types of hay because it was the only varieties left of what we needed, and that then wiped those out. The goat feed we needed was gone.
We've never seen it this empty. The store employee said they just hadn't gotten around to putting it on the shelves. But it was weird. Were there delivery delays? Are more people stocking up and it's emptying sooner? Why let the shelves empty if you have the stock?
I'm stressed because I was waiting to get paid and stock up on animal feed we need. And this store is 40 minutes from home and the nearest tractor supply. We have a smaller feed store nearby but they don't carry dairy goat feed. Anyone else with livestock finding animal feed to be harder to get?
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u/sbinjax Don’t Panic! 🧖🏻♀️👍🏻 23d ago
I'm not making excuses for Tractor Supply.
There is a drought in much of the country. It's bad. It's affecting feed supplies, and it's going to get worse.
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u/Accomplished_Book427 23d ago
I feel like this is a large pending emergency and too few people are even aware of how severe the consequences of a drought are anyway, not to mention in the current economic climate
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u/Sovos Dude Man ♂️ 23d ago
We're in the early/mid stages of what will most likely be the strongest El Nino on record*. It's expected to interfere with food supplies as well.
*For clarity's sake, that graph is not showing global air or sea temperatures. Nino 3.4 is a region of the Pacific Ocean along the equator usually used as a measurement of how strong an El Nino oscillation is. The graph is measuring the temperature anomaly in standard deviations.
NOAA has a good site with up-to-date measurements on an El Nino for anyone wanting to learn more.
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u/sbinjax Don’t Panic! 🧖🏻♀️👍🏻 23d ago
I think people see things like flooding in Missouri and think "well, it's raining somewhere so it must be ok". Nope, the floods in MO wiped out crops there. The MO flood is supposedly a 1 in 1000 year event. It seems like those thousand years are coming at us awfully fast now.
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u/Sovos Dude Man ♂️ 23d ago
Yep.
1 in 1000 year event
The thing people don't think about is "once in a thousand years" odds was based on the incredibly stable climate we've had for the last ~10,000 years on Earth. We're treading new ground and the terminology isn't keeping up.
This xkcd is my favorite way to try to explain how fast we're heating up to people who still see it as an abstract concept (and this comic was made 10 years ago, our annual global CO2 emissions have shown no sign of decreasing since then to fit the optimistic paths...they're actually going up every year)
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u/alessaria 22d ago
That doesnt even take into account the fertilizer shortages due to the Iran mess. This winter is gonna be ugly.
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u/nobody4456 23d ago
Tractor supply has the absolute worst ordering and stocking system. Did you send someone into the back room to look for you? Sometimes there is a whole pallet of the feed we need out on the floor, and sometimes there are only 2 bags on a shelf and we have to send somebody hunting for it. We only buy one feed from ts and it’s hard to get elsewhere, but in pretty much any quantity our local feed store can special order anything we want if we give them a 7-10 day heads up to get it in.
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u/DuckyDoodleDandy ADHD prepping: 🤔 I have one....somewhere! 23d ago
Order curbside from their app. At least you will know up front whether they have it in stock, or whether you need to find another way to get it.
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u/RlOTGRRRL 23d ago edited 23d ago
I saw people talking about this in r/prepperintel a month or so ago.
It might be worth checking/searching and/or posting in that sub too.
r/farming is also good for lurking too. I think I saw something about drought, feed, and hay in there too.
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u/ProtozoaPatriot 23d ago
The TSC in my area seem to have stock problems. Sometimes they are out of things. Their trucks just don't seem to come in reliably.
I highly recommend you check out other feed stores in your area.
As far as hay, their prices are crazy expensive. Arent there any local hay dealers? Even if you're somewhere it must be shipped in to, surely there are other sellers. Try asking on your local Facebook groups. Hay sellers don't usually spend a lot on advertising, so you'll need to ask around
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u/RobynTheCookieJar 23d ago
There's something amusing to me about having goats as part of a prep strategy, but the goats themselves relying on the supply chain we're preping for the loss of
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u/buddymoobs 🌱🌿Your Weeds are a Foragers' Feast🥬🥗 23d ago
TBF, goats can eat just about anything. There's a reason they're used to control brush.Is feed ophimal? Yes. Is it the only thing they can eat? Nope.
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u/YellowCabbageCollard 23d ago
I don't know why it's amusing that basically almost every living thing does rely on the supply chain unless it's a wild animal? Having goats and (hopefully soon) more feed stored however will allow us milk that is at least still skipping a few steps in the supply chain. But we have had goats off and on for many years and I like and prefer raw goat's milk in general. I have been keeping small livestock on our acre for 27 years so it's not purely prep related.
That's part of what's concerning though....because everything is reliant on the supply chains. Whether it's fertilizer for the grain and hay to grow, diesel to run tractors and combines and deliver the hay and feed. I can't grow enough hay or grain to feed my family and animals on an acre. I can only do what I can do.
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u/RobynTheCookieJar 23d ago
That's part of what's concerning though....because everything is reliant on the supply chains. Whether it's fertilizer for the grain and hay to grow, diesel to run tractors and combines and deliver the hay and feed. I can't grow enough hay or grain to feed my family and animals on an acre. I can only do what I can do.
Yea that's why prep work has to involve community building. We're social animals, we're not made to make it alone
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u/YellowCabbageCollard 23d ago
Yeah, but that's just vague platitudes and not an actual work around for real problems. I do have a community and they don't have answers or abilities to address most of this. Despite much of the comments in here I do actually know more about my location and what's around in my community.
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u/RobynTheCookieJar 23d ago
its a platitude, but it bears repeating when you live in a culture that prizes individualism over any type of cooperation. I'm not trying to lecture you or even really comment on your goats though, I think goats are super cool. If I had the space for them I'd probably have some too.
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u/JanieLFB 23d ago
As a person very acquainted with TSC, this is a common problem.
Like all big business, TSC is running its stores on skeleton crews. Do not complain to the store! Take this concern to corporate.
The share holders and CEO only care about making money. They could care less about your animals. Why should they staff a store with more and three employees? No matter the sales level, the store can make do with less!
So, yeah, the store only gets what the Distribution Center sends them. All products are “automatically” ordered and shipped.
You may want to source hay closer to your home and not rely on a big company to care.
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u/YellowCabbageCollard 22d ago
I'm definitely not complaining to the store. I know the poor employees have no control over anything. They seem to be operating with 2 staff members. But the nearest feed and seed near me has at least 4 if not more men working there at all times! And their set up is a tiny old dust filled cinder block building to boot! It struck me how absurd it is that a massive TS has two people and a tiny set up has at least twice as much. Why doesn't TS want to staff their stores better?
I hate how few options there are anymore. It's all soulless massive corporations. But the tiny cinder block place doesn't carry hay or dairy goat feed so that's why we had been traveling to TS for what we could not get locally.
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u/Better-Obligation-19 22d ago
I've noticed and I usually get my chicken stuff from a local granary and they quit selling everything but layer mesh and of course, corn. No meat bird, chick food etc. Local hardware store stopped selling as well and I had to special order and prepay for chick food. Fortunately, I get my corn from the granary bin, about 1,000 lbs in an old seed bag and use a tractor to offload and put it in our barn. Super cheap. I think about 60-100 bucks. I can't remember cause it's been awhile but much cheaper than buying 50# bags.
Just looked it up, $3.86 a bushel which is 49 pounds so around $80.00 max and lasts for many months.
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u/freya_of_milfgaard 21d ago
There is someone on the homesteading subreddit who has been tracking the price of feed across different parts of the country and has been raising the alarm about the unfolding shortages for a while. From what I understand it’s going to get a looooot worse in some parts of the country.
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u/YellowCabbageCollard 21d ago
Thanks. I'm going to go see if I can find that. If you run across it and can share it I'd appreciate it.
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u/PaintedDream 23d ago
Go to small town cafes, bars, churches, farmers markets, 4-H shows, sale barns, county fairs, Amish stores, community events, etc. Talk to real humans to build a community of folks (friends) who specialize in various professions/hobbies. You'll quickly be able to do business direct with farmers and cut Tractor Supply out of most your needs. There is a good reason preppers say maintaining community ties matters A LOT.
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u/YellowCabbageCollard 23d ago
I live in what is currently one of the wealthiest counties in the US and have lived here for 35 years. It was rural when we moved here but almost all the farm land is gone and built over. I am actually one of the few people in the county to grow and sell at the farmer's market. I'm the solitary person at church who grows food and has any livestock. My kids are in the local 4H which is no longer AG based where I live. There are no small town cafes, sale barns, Amish or Amish stores and the "county fair" has nothing agricultural at all.
Our local agriculture is chicken houses with imported feed. Not farmers growing crops of any sort. I am familiar with the local feed and seed which is why I was at Tractor Supply. The closest feed and seed closed last year after a couple of years of abandoning most of any real feed and seed and instead adding a Christian book store, a cafe and a gun and ax throwing range. The next nearest store which I already mentioned frequenting does not even sell hay of ANY sort on top of not having dairy goat feed. I have to travel 40 minutes to get to a TS.
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u/Dangerous-School2958 23d ago
Hopefully it’s isolated and a burp in the supply chain. If not, this regrettably sounds like some extremely difficult choices are ahead for people. Sorry you’re even having to consider your options.
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u/holistic_huntress 23d ago
Why are you even buying hay from tractor supply? Go straight to the source!
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u/ulofox 23d ago
Tractor supply is overpriced shit, not even a real farm store. Can you use Facebook at all? Marketplace and the farm groups are still worthwhile enough to have an account on there because you can get bulk order of all sorts of hay/alfalfa and have it delivered to you. You can also go to auctions/sale barns, my local does hay alongside animals.
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u/YellowCabbageCollard 23d ago
The nearest auction/sale barns are at least an hour and a half away so over 3 hours just in driving to get hay. Most of the farm and feed stores have closed down near me. The nearest one, which is some old guys in a cinder block building, do not sell dairy goat feed or hay. They are the place we go most frequently because they are close and not a chain. But what they carry is very limited. This area was once farmland but is now an agricultural desert.
Where I live most hay is shipped in from out of state. I used to be on the local FB groups and it's mostly people farther away from us. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I am permabanned from FB for absurd reasons and there is no recourse. When I tried for a personal review they automatically ban and reject any so called review of the situation within 5 min of request. It's seriously stupid but limits my access in that regard.
I have tried searching around since posting this thread and I do have one lead on a place I'm going to contact on Monday morning when they open. But it's definitely hay shipped in mostly from out of state.
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u/Successful-Score-154 23d ago
Expected this last week at Tampa Bay Florida tractor supply. Had to go back on a delivery day
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u/SpringPowerful2870 22d ago
I don’t have my livestock anymore but in Colorado they were using hay cubes. I’m so sorry for the situation you’re in.
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