Frozen muffin tin snacks for chickens

To make these awesome frozen muffin tin snacks for chickens, all you need is:

• Muffin tin (whatever size you have that will fit in your freezer)
• Paracord or some other rope (don’t use rope that falls apart easily)
• Chicken snacks or treats (like corn, shredded chicken, chopped veggies, purchased snacks, scratch, etc.)
• Water

First, cut the paracord into pieces that are about 18-24” long. These frozen treats will be hung up, so think about what you have to hang them on to help determine how long to cut the paracord. I’ll be hanging these off some 2x4s, so I’m making them plenty long to tie around a 2×4 and hang down. I also burned the ends of each one so I can wash and reuse them over and over again without the ends fraying.

Next, tie a knot or two at one end of the paracord. This just helps the treats stay on it longer as they melt and get pecked at.

Place the paracord in the muffin tray. Put one piece of paracord (the knotted end) per muffin spot. If they keep moving or getting in the way, you can do one (or just a few) at a time.

Add the treats. For this, you can use anything the chickens enjoy. Legit chicken treats, fruits and veggies, various meats and cheeses, etc. Fill each muffin spot to about 3/4 of the way to the top.

For mine, I’m using some shredded chicken I canned a while back and some corn I canned as well. Our chickens love both of these, so I know they’ll spend the time pecking to get everything out lol.

In the past, I have used dried mealworms or fly larvae, scratch, cucumbers, tomatoes, really just anything I’ve got laying around that I can use up, haha. You can also make each one different, or half one way and half another. It really doesn’t matter – the whole point is get the chickens pecking at the frozen block. It’s fun, it helps cool them off, and it’s something to do on a hot day aside from just mess with and bother each other 🙂

Add water to the muffin tray, filling up to the top. They may come out above the edges when the water expands as they freeze, but that’s fine, the ones that do that will just be slightly larger treats. I don’t think any chicken is going to complain about getting bigger frozen treats, lol.

Now this goes in the freezer.

I used a muffin tin that makes six muffins. This fits in my freezer with plenty of room left for freeze dryer trays (check out all the freeze drying we’ve done here!) and ice cream (a necessity). The six muffin tin also fits perfectly on a cutting board, which helps me more easily freeze it flat and not weirdly tilted, spilling some.

Of course, you don’t have to freeze yours also on a cutting board. It can just be put in the freezer in the muffin tin with nothing underneath. Just saying using a cutting board makes it easier for me since my freezer is often jam packed with various other things, ha!

And now, we wait… tick tock, tick tock…

These usually take about 4-6 hours to freeze all the way. I generally give our chickens at least two of them at a time. Sometimes, if it’s super hot, I just hang all six of them at once. I also sometimes use the larger muffin tin and make 12 at a time so I’ve got extra.

While these ones were made to hang, I’ve made some in the past that don’t have paracord in them, and they don’t hang. Those I’ll toss into our little kiddie pool if it’s out, or just toss them into one of their food containers. They don’t really seem to care about how they’re presented, they love them no matter what 🙂

Happy Chickening!!

Our frozen muffin tin snacks for chickens are finished!! We only made 6 of them today, so will probably be making one batch every day or two from now until the end of summer. They absolutely LOVE these!❤️🐓 pic.twitter.com/4OORoGNiD3

— Buck Hills Farm (@BuckHillsFarm) June 25, 2024