Homemade Flock Block

Our chickens don't eat a lot of the organic commercial feed we buy - they much prefer to free-range and forage for their own thankyouverymuch.   Of course winter months tend to make the good foraging scarce compared to the warmer months, so I try to come up with things to occupy them.   We have purchased the commercial flock blocks, but they tend to be too big for our smaller flock and there's a bunch of stuff in there that they apparently aren't all that impressed with; so they tear it apart until they have picked out all their favorite goodies (like the sunflower seeds) at which point, it is reduced to a pile of rejected refuse that usually ends up in the compost bin.  This has led me to develop my own recipe using their favorite things.  I hope your flock enjoys it as much as ours does!

I found that our local Waremart (owned by Winco) has a great selection of seeds in their bulk section and I end up saving quite a bit of money buying it there; they even sell the black oil sunflower seeds, preferred by birds everywhere, for around $.60/lb. That's about half of what I pay per pound for the 10 lb bag at the feed store.

What you will need
14 cups of their favorite goodies.  Here is the breakdown of the mixture I used for the block shown, but you can use whatever you want - I even thought about putting some meal worms in there, but decided not to this time:

3 cups organic layer crumble (OK maybe not their fave, but it does have good nutrition)
3 cups of their favorite locally produced scratch, which includes cracked corn, barley and oats (among other things)
3 cups black oil sunflower seeds
3 cups flax seed
2 cups millet
4 whole eggs - processed shells and all in my food processor. Makes it so much easier than trying to crush the shells on their own.
2 cups molasses
1/2 cup fat (melted if you use animal fat such as lard) - this also should be based on whatever you have on hand. I used some melted bacon fat that I had for this particular batch.

3 loaf pans sprayed and lined with parchment paper (I get mine at Cash & Carry since I go through so much). See a detailed description of a great way to do this further down.

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cut the parchment paper as shown below. Spray or grease the loaf pans, line with the parchment and then spray the inside of the parchment well with oil.  It is very important to do the double spray.  I use a Misto brand oil sprayer so I can use my own non-GMO oil, since almost ALL commercial brands are nothing but GMO canola.  I quit using canola oil when I first researched it about 15 years ago, but that's another blog...

Mix all ingredients together in a very large bowl and divide evenly between the 3 parchment lined and sprayed loaf pans.  Press the mixture together well down into the pans, and level it out as you go.

Bake for 2 hours.  Turn the oven off, but leave the blocks in to cool.  After about an hour of cooling time, remove from the oven briefly to loosen the blocks by pulling up on the paper carefully on both sides (do NOT remove!) then press down firmly to compress again, and return to the warm oven to continue cooling.  Allow the blocks to cool completely in the oven.  This will take a few hours.

Once the blocks have cooled completely, gently remove them by pulling the sides of the parchment.  If you want to store a couple of them like I do, wrap in additional parchment and then store in a plastic bag.

Put the whole eggs in your food processor and process until the shells are fairly fine

Center each loaf pan on a half-sheet of parchment paper; mark the corners with a marker

Draw lines from the corners out at an angle - keeping in mind the slight slope of a loaf pan as shown.  Cut along the lines to form 4 notches at the corners

Insert into well oiled loaf pan allowing overlap at the seams

Spray inside of parchment.  I so love my Misto pump sprayer

Blocks pressed down well and ready for the oven