Rodents - You bet they will. You are ringing the dinner bell for mice. Also stored grain insects including several species of beadle and weevil will more that likely infest these products. Try to use them up this fall if you can. If you cannot, then realize that infestation will not affect their usefulness as fertilizers next year. I would rather have them in the freezing garage than in my basement. Bill Hill

Insect and rodents will ravage the grains, it whats for dinner.

Before we got cats I had rats in the garage. In an attempt to keep the corn meal good I put it into a Rubbermaid bin. The following spring it was half corn meal and half bugs. No rats but lots of things. The top spread easily but the bottom was where the bugs were. It was stuck together and did not spread as easily, but hey, protein is protein. I considered it to be composted corn meal.

Unless you have a large freezer, you should be able to freeze small batches of your meals and put those into a bin until it has all been frozen. Freezing should kill the eggs and larvae of any bugs.

"Freezing should kill the eggs and larvae of any bugs."

Many eggs, larvae, and insects survive the winters in the frozen north. Here's a link.

Survival Strategies

The cooler that you can store the grains the better they will keep. I buy only what I can use within a few days. I've found that it is much easier than dealing with pests.

-Deerslayer

I buy only what I can use within a few days. I've found that it is much easier than dealing with pests.

Agreed. I tend to purchase what I use in a season, but bugs aren't much of a problem in a one hundred degree garage with no water in the soy.

I wouldn't dream of keeping anything through fall and winter. By spring...yuck.

deerslayer: Fortunately I have one of those new freezers that cools with liquid hydrogen to -400 degrees, heh, heh!

All we need to do is keep the bugs dead or dormant until spring when we were going to use up all the leftover stuff anyway. For all practical purposes, if you freeze your grains down to zero degrees F, you will not have problems with the stuff getting yucky before the spring.

dchall, cool freezer! 8^)

-Deerslayer

Storing whole grains requires some thought. Use mylar bags that are sealable, in 2-3 lb units, and put them into a 5 gallon sealable tin can or plastic bucket. Each mylar bag should be flushed with CO2, before sealing to purge oxygen. Alternately you can use Nitrogen. and you can use an oxygen absorber, a 50 cent sized disc that contains ground or powdered Iron shavings. These above items prevent weevils and beetles from hatching.
Spoilage from bugs is bad news, and is grains are only edible if you are in a famine situation.
Next place the bags into a tightly fitted metal can You can even use a new metal trash can, since the individual mylar bags will allow you to pull a usable amount out at a time, and leave the rest intact. Tape the lid tightly. this will keep rats out. Can's as small as 5 gal tins, are usable, and a plastic bucket works fine, except for rats, which will gnaw through the plastic and mylar in a trice.
Buying only what you can consume in a few days is short-sighted at best. In an emergency, stores will run out within hours of all commodities, crowds will be dangerous, and anything left will be rationed.

I store bags of alfalfa pellets and corn meal for about 3 months. As long as they stay dry, I don't have a problem.

I think I had one bag of corn meal start to smell and that was because it had gotten damp.

I stored a bag of SBM in my garage over winter in New England. I spread it this spring and had no problems. Agree with the advice to keep it dry and cool.