"whole" oats and "feed" oats can be the same or completely different from "Seed" oats. the risk is solely on the buyer.
Seed oats from a reputable dealer are cleaned, sized, bagged and tested for germination, purity, and off-type seed/noxious weeds.
Feed,whole,rolled oats covers all other oat grain that is not verified as seed quality. It may be straight out of the combine, carryover from past crops, full of weed seed, cleaned but found to be less than optimal germination, or any combination of potential problems.
Some dealers will sell this product as "feed" -nudge nudge wink wink - to circumvent testing and tagging required by Texas Seed Law.
"Bob" is a variety of oat. Old, disease prone and rusty as it is, they are slightly better than feed oats.
Variety is determined by the breeder of the oat genetics and differentiated from other in the same overall class (oat) by specific traits. Some are tall, some short, some mature faster, some tolerate heavy grazing, etc.
In most cases, the genetics are owned by the breeder and can only be grown/sold by authorized users. Similar to an intellectual property patent. Royalty is paid to the breeder to enable further breeding to continue improvement of the genetic lines. Disease resistance drives much of the breeding. Rust, virus and insects are continually adapting to the new varieties.
These varieties must be grown in pure stands, inspected by the Texas Dept of Ag, and processed separately of other varieties.
Royalty, inspection, contract growers, etc will add to the cost that is passed to consumer. Consumer benefits from improved stands, disease resistance, lower input cost (fungicide, insecticide) etc. And educated consumers can plant based on traits they deem important to their operation.
Finding the value/cost point should be a priority for the dealer and the consumer. Or you can toss a few bags of feed oats in the truck and see what happens.
Yes I am in the industry... but not trying to step on toes here.
R