F is for Flock Block

There are lots of recipes for these around the web - the Flock Block, otherwise known as a bird seed cone.  I decided to adapt recipes I found online to suit what I had to hand. You can use anything really, the only required ingredients being some eggs and an oil of some sort to act as a binder.  This is a baked flock block, hence the inclusion of eggs.  I did see quite a few recipes that used an animal fat (such as lard or other fat that's solid at room temperature) but whilst these might suit a climate with cold winters below zero, that would just fall apart in our much milder Australian weather, particularly when it gets over 40C here in summer!

So here is what I used, mainly as this is what I had to hand:

• 2 cups mixed grain
• 1 cup crushed egg shells (I like to recycle, but shell grit would do just as well)
• 1 cup pellets
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup barley
• 5-6 bantam eggs (or 4 standard eggs), lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup treacle (or molasses, honey or similar)
• 1/2 - 1 cup vegetable oil

Mix together all the the dry ingredients in a bowl.  Mix together all the wet ingredients except for the vegetable oil.  Add wet ingredients to dry, mixing well, and then gradually add in the vegetable oil until you get a mix that's wet enough to stick together well when a handful in squeezed into a ball.  The amount of vegetable oil you need will obviously depend on the dryness of your mix ingredients.

Put into a lined tin - I used two loaf tins, and this produced blocks about 2-3 cm deep.  Use a chopstick or similar to poke a hole in the mix to use for hanging it later. Bake at 200C for about 20 minutes until starting to brown.  Cool, attach string, and hang for your chickens to enjoy! 

Other suggestions to add:

• Meal worms
• Peanut butter
• Wheat germ
• Any other seeds you have

Our chooks took a day or two to figure out what to do with it, but once they got the idea, the entire thing was demolished within about 2 days!