Does anyone make homemade flock blocks for their chickens? My wife and I have been making them for a couple years now. She has two baking now. The chickens really seem to like them. They are a mix of grains, sunflower seeds, layer, tallow, and eggs to help bind them together. They eat them over the same grain not baked. They get grain every day too. She adds red pepper flakes to them too some times.

Never did, but would add sunflower seeds to their scratch during cold spells for the extra fat..

I make them to feed the finches, sparrows, junkos and quail in the back yard. Much cheaper than the ones you buy without the useless filler. I do 20 cups of country blend bird seed mixed with 5 T gelatin in 3 cups boiling water. I line containers with parchment paper and tamp the mix in, let it cool and firm up in the cold overnight, remove from container and paper and let it dry (good air circulation or they will mold in the middle). Made 15 blocks last week.

How long do the blocks last before going bad? Are there any issues with the eggs spoiling in them?

Keith

She made two blocks 10 x 10 x 4 inches. She used six eggs in the two blocks. They were cooked for an hour and 45 minutes at 350. She cuts each block in quarters and gives the chickens a quarter a day. We have never had any problems with spoilage or mold in eight days. They set on the counter until used. They would eat more iff you gave it to them. Part of us making the blocks is I get bags of grain samples ( wheat, durum, barley, flax. sunflower, peas, canola, lintels, and soy beans) and there is always a good number of soy bean bags. Soy beans and lintels are poison to chickens unless cooked. We soak them for 24 hours in water then they go in the block and get baked. The chickens will not eat them unless cooked. If you throw a hand full of the raw ones down they may eat two or three and walk off. Barley they will not eat too. Which is odd to me, wild ducks will pig out on barley.

My chickens seem to eat just fine without me cooking for them. They even eat off the ground and pick through carcasses and eat mice.

I shot some squirrels the other day. Tossed all the guts hide and head in the chicken pen. They were chasing each other around arguing over who got what. Think I might toss in a coon carcass today . I bet they will have at it.

lol don't take em long to clean up a big fat beaver carcass

Turned mine out in the recent warm spell. All butts and elbows out the Coop door and race to the Beaver carcasses just outside the fur shed door !

I turned mine out for about the last week. I used to get the cleaning out of the band saw at the meat shop. It is a mix of fat, bone and meat about like sawdust. You throw some of that to them it didn't last long. The meat shop closed, but I get ground beef tallow from a guy now.