Heart-Shaped Chicken Treats for Your Flock
Making Treats for Chickens is Fun and Great for Busting Boredom

Reading Time: 3 minutes
Whether our birds are pets or livestock, we all want to make sure they are as safe and warm as possible in bad weather. During cold winter months, many backyard chicken owners have kept their chickens inside for safety but it can lead to boredom. What better way to give them a pick-me-up than special, heart-shaped chicken treats you can make at home?
Chickens are naturally curious, busy animals. If left to look at the same for walls for any period of time, they start to get a little stir crazy. Come to think of it, the reason I schedule photo shoots off-site is so I can get a change of scenery. But what if a field trip is not an option? It’s not like you can take the flock to your local department store and turn them loose in the toy department for entertainment. FYI, even if you try to sneak in through the garden department, they WILL stop you at the door. But I digress.

So I came up with a more localized solution. Many of us can remember at least one time when even the unruliest child was quiet and occupied after receiving a new toy. Okay, I realize I’m probably starting to lose some of you … you may have images of Lego sets and Hotwheels tracks in the chicken coop. Not quite, but chickens are most well-behaved when they have entertainment, and what is more entertaining to a chicken than food that moves?
Anyone who has ever watched a chicken chase a mouse around or try to catch a moth can attest to this.
An unfortunate side effect of chicken boredom is that eggs often look like toys. Because egg eating is a behavior that I want to avoid at all costs, I came up with a solution. In the summer, we suspend ears of sweet corn from large, free-swinging screw hooks. They chase the swinging treat for hours trying to catch every last kernel of corn.
So, I adapted my flock block chicken treat recipe for an indoor application. We have seven cages of birds, so I needed at least seven separate treats. I looked through my (mildly obsessive) collection of cookware and settled on a heart-shaped donut pan. What better way to send my flock a Valentine’s Day gift they will actually like!

Heart-Shaped Chicken Treats
Ingredients
- 2 cups of scratch grains
- 1 cup of old-fashioned oats
- 1 cup Omega3 feed supplement
- 1/2 cup cornmeal
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup crushed egg shell (oyster shell will also work)
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 cup molasses
- 1/2 cup coconut oil, slightly warmed so it’s liquid
- 1/4 cup of wheat germ oil

Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Mix all the dry ingredients together.
- Make a shallow well in the dry ingredients and add in the wet ingredients.
- In a circular motion, stir from the center until all of the dry ingredients are mixed well. It should have a thick sticky texture.
- Press the mixture into your pan (any pan will work, really). Use a spoon handle and make a hole in the batter large enough to put a hanger through if you aren’t using a donut pan.
- Bake for 30 minutes.
- The time is based on small biscuits, you will need to adapt the time if you are using a larger pan.
- Once cool, tie a hanging ribbon through the hole and suspend from the roof of their indoor cage.
Voila! Edible toys for chickens!
Do you have any fun recipes for chicken treats? Share them in the comments below.
Originally published in 2014 and regularly vetted for accuracy.
These look really cool. I am wondering if these would be okay for wild birds as well. I think these would be a fun activity for the after school group I work with. I think they would like to have some to take home and not to just make for my chickens. 😉