East Essex Smallholders Chitchat

Homemade Suet Cakes for Chickens

By Jill Winger 7 Comments

If you ever visit my chicken coop, don’t expect to see any chandeliers…

I’ll admit, they do look kinda cool, but I tend to be somewhat of a minimalist when it comes to chicken keeping.
I prefer to stick to the basics (that means no chicken sweaters either…). Heck, my flock doesn’t even have names, other than the rooster, which the Prairie Kids named “Chicken Nugget”.

That being said, I do like to provide them with a little bit of extra nutrition in the winter when they can’t be out foraging for lovely bugs and green stuff. Our long, cold Wyoming winters wear on everyone after a while, even the critters.
These homemade suet cakes are modeled after the ones offered to wild birds. My version uses tallow and is an excellent way to offer your flock a bit of extra fat and energy, especially during the winter months.

Homemade Suet Cakes for Chickens

• 1 ½ cups melted tallow, lard, or meat drippings
• 1 cup unsalted sunflower seeds (in the shell)
• 1 cup dried fruit (cranberries, raisins, chopped apples, etc)
• 1 cup whole grains (scratch mix, whole wheat, or millet are ideal)

Instructions

1. Line a nine-by-five inch loaf pan (or any similar sized pan) with parchment paper or foil. Mix the seeds, fruit, and grains together, and place in the pan.
2. Cover the dry ingredients completely with the liquid fat. You may need to mash everything around with a fork to make sure there are no air bubbles.
3. Allow the cake to harden completely. You can speed up this process by sticking it in the refrigerator for a while.
4. Remove it from the pan by lifting up on the liner to pop it out. You can cut it into several pieces, or feed the whole thing at once by either tossing it in a feed pan, or pinning it to the wall like I did with a scrap of chicken wire.

Suet Cake Notes:

• This recipe is extremely flexible. Don’t hesitate to play around with it!
• Some other ingredients that would make great additions or substitutions to this recipe would be unsalted nuts or peanut butter. You can also sprinkle in spices and herbs such as garlic powder or cayenne pepper, oregano, rosemary, etc.
• If you don’t butcher your own animals, see if you can purchase fat trimmings or suet from your local butcher shop. Here is my tallow-rendering tutorial.
• Looking for other cool ways to use tallow? Check out my tallow soap recipe, my tallow candle tutorial, and how to make the best french fries ever with tallow.
• Another option is to save the fat that you drain from frying up hamburger and sausage. Store it in the freezer until you have enough to make this recipe. A little bit of bacon grease is fine, but I would avoid using large amounts because of the nitrates and sodium it contains.

 

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