Winter is HERE. We’ve had plenty of subzero days already and you can definitely see a difference in our flock when we have a longer cold spell. It takes a lot of energy to keep your body temperature up when it is that far below freezing. When we have several days of single digit temps or subzero, the chickens get skinnier pretty quickly. Obviously, from a heat perspective, we don’t want that. There is a reason animals strive t get fat fro winter up here, humans included. My favorite winters are when I am pregnant and therefore heavy. Those are the only winters I am not miserably cold.
We don’t heat our chicken coop, so I like to give the birds some fattening foods for their revved up metabolisms in winter. scratch grains are always an option, but I take it a step further with flock blocks, aka, suet seed bricks.
Suet is the fat found around kidneys and organs in a cow. You can purchase it in its whole form at many butcher shops, or buy it already rendered into tallow. We buy our beef a whole steer at a time, so I ask for the fat and bones and render my own tallow. See my post about rendering your own tallow.
Homemade Beef Tallow Bird Seed Bricks
Ingredients:
- 3 cups rendered grassfed tallow
- 2 cups Chicken scratch or mixed bird seed
- 1 cup dry corn
In a saucepan, melt tallow on low heat. Once it is liquid, mix in corn and scratch. Fold together until well blended and all seeds/kernels are coated in tallow.
Press mixture into a silicone muffin pan. Work quickly before it hardens.
It should fill six jumbo muffin cups or 12 standard. I have a flock of 15 right now, so I prefer the jumbo size. Pop the pan in the fridge and let it set overnight. You can also just mold it into balls with your hands and wrap them in plastic cling wrap.
The next day you can pop your tallow scratch bricks out. Actually, you can pop them out of the freezer in less than a half hour. Tallow hardens very quickly. These store well in the freezer. Just put them in a Ziploc storage bag.
Tossing a tallow brick into the chicken run is a nice fatty treat for our birds on a cold winter day. Our winters are long and hit subzero temps for long stretches, so our birds need the extra calories to keep warm.
If you have truly cold weather, and you have ample space for your flock to get enough exercise and play time, you really don’t need to worry about chicken obesity. Well, unless you are one of those people who bring your birds in the house and feed them pie. If that’s the case, I don’t know what to tell you.
Making suet bird bricks is also an easy way to moisturize your hands with all that fat. they will smell pretty beefy though.