I was browsing Pinterest a few months back and saw a 'recipe' for Summer frozen yogurt treats for kids. I was intrigued so I read the whole post and it sounded exactly like something my chickens would love! They act like little kids most of the time so I'm pretty sure they'll like kid snacks!
After all, they do like yogurt & fruit, plus it's mighty warm here in the summer....so I decided to make some for my chickens and I was right, they loved it!
The recipe is simple. You'll need yogurt and fresh fruit, plus some type of mold. All you do is combine them all, freeze it and then give them to your chickens on a warm day!
I used this mold I bought off of Amazon. I believe it was originally sold for toddler portions, but I bought it to make herbal ice cubes. So I had it on hand and decided to use it for this chicken treat because silicone molds are just so easy to unmold and it's fairly small individual portions.
I try not to give my chickens large amounts of treats at once. If they can't eat them all in one day, then when we go to bed at night that food is sitting out there just begging some scavenger to come find it.
Unfortunately there are lots of scavengers like opossums that will also eat eggs if they find their way into the coop. Of course if a chicken is sitting on the eggs and the opossum's trying to get the eggs, well we just don't want that battle to happen!
So because of that I never give them large portions of treats because I need it to be gone by night time so it doesn't attract scavengers. I only have about a dozen chickens in each flock right now, if you have more than that they would probably have no problem finishing up a larger portion.
All I do is put a dollop of yogurt in the bottom of each compartment and take another spoon of yogurt and smear it all on the sides inside the mold. Then I add some chopped fruit, more yogurt, more fruit etc till each compartment is full.
Snap the lid on it and put it in the freezer for a few hours. When you're ready to give them to the chickens, just pop them out and the flock will come running!
I wrote this other post where I talk about freezing produce trimmings and other chicken snacks like bird seed in water for a summer treat. I have to admit I do that one more often, but I tend to buy yogurt often and so I frequently get to a point where I need to use some up before it goes bad.
The chickens don't mind that the yogurt is close to it's expiration date and, fun fact... Freezing does not kill the live and active cultures in yogurt. So they still get the benefits of the probiotics in yogurt with this treat plus it helps them cool down in the summer. I'll call that a win-win situation!
I hope your flock likes it as much as mine does!
Related reading: Having a particularly hot summer? Learn How to identify and treat heat stress in chickens.
~L
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