Looking for ideas for chicken entertainment during freezing temps!

[aart]

Fake owl near the coop!

 

[animallover2019]

[/QUOTE

that’s crazy!!!! My hawks are TERRIFIED of my fake owl!

 

[AOrchard]

Mix little bitty shreds of meat, veggies, or goodies (cooking scraps) up with a bunch of water and a little turkey gravy and freeze (essentially unfiltered stock with lots of bits). Dump out the block in the run. It slowly melts, and they'll have a delightful time pecking out half frozen tidbits and enjoying the melting liquid. It slows them down since it's frozen, so they get to enjoy for longer and revisit through the day. (I first found this with stock that got lost in my freezer and was pretty dried out so I tossed it to them, they didn't care and loved it. Now they get anything I would have tossed froze into blocks with water).

 

[LizzzyJo]

OMG this is gold. Maybe I will save my money. Do you move it every week? I’ve heard moving it helps? What about the wings out styles?

 

[LizzzyJo]

Mix little bitty shreds of meat, veggies, or goodies (cooking scraps) up with a bunch of water and a little turkey gravy and freeze (essentially unfiltered stock with lots of bits). Dump out the block in the run. It slowly melts, and they'll have a delightful time pecking out half frozen tidbits and enjoying the melting liquid. It slows them down since it's frozen, so they get to enjoy for longer and revisit through the day. (I first found this with stock that got lost in my freezer and was pretty dried out so I tossed it to them, they didn't care and loved it. Now they get anything I would have tossed froze into blocks with water).

This is awesome! Do you find that the meat water attracts nighttime predators? I always worry about that with meat. I give them meat often but never meat juice.

 

[3KillerBs]

Giving them things to sit on, crawl under, and hide behind is probably better than feeding them a lot of treats.

How about raking up a nice pile of old leaves?

Or giving them a straw bale with one of the strings cut so they can spend a week or two tearing it apart?

 

[LizzzyJo]

Giving them things to sit on, crawl under, and hide behind is probably better than feeding them a lot of treats.

How about raking up a nice pile of old leaves?

Or giving them a straw bale with one of the strings cut so they can spend a week or two tearing it apart?

Oh good idea! I have lots of old straw bales from unsuccessful straw bale gardening lol.

 

[AOrchard]

Piles of leaves are great too, like the straw bale.

 

[AOrchard]

This is awesome! Do you find that the meat water attracts nighttime predators? I always worry about that with meat. I give them meat often but never meat juice.

Not much in winter, but to be fair mine rarely leave much behind, and I feed it on a piece of plywood, so they are able to consume it instead of it getting lost to the mud/ground.

 

[3KillerBs]

I collect random foil pans, plastic takeout containers, and the like from our meals and use those to collect the scraps that I give the chickens.

Of course they dump them eventually, but it serves to contain things for a while.

What vegetable scraps they don't eat becomes one with the bedding and I don't give them more meat than they're likely to eat.

However, I think that the chickens themselves are sufficient lure to predators that having meat scraps isn't likely to cause a problem unless you give them so much that it either spoils or develops maggots.