Make Your Own Suet Mix for Birds

A Recipe and Some Helpful Tips For Filling a Suet Feeder

Apr 7, 2008

Suet Cakes for Birds, Rosemary Drisdelle

Lots of birds visit suet feeders for a high energy meal. Birdwatchers can make their own suet mix with a few basic ingredients and create a simple suet feeder.

Birds and Suet

Suet, the hard fat that is found around the kidneys and loins of cattle and sheep, is a popular food for birds, especially during the winter and spring. At these times, birds need a high fat diet to help them withstand cold weather, and to provide energy for mating, nest building, and raising young. Bird species that come to suet include bluebirds, grosbeaks, Blue Jays, kinglets, mockingbirds, nuthatches, orioles, robins, starlings, tanagers, thrashers, thrushes, warblers, and woodpeckers. (Not all of these birds will fly up to a suet feeder, however).

Suet cakes in various shapes and sizes are available where bird food and feeders are sold, but it is very easy to make your own suet mix.

Suet Mix Recipe

To make a nutritious suet cake for wild birds, you need the following ingredients:

2 cups ground suet
1 cup peanut butter, preferably natural
2 cups yellow cornmeal
2 cups wild birdseed mix

Melt the suet gently, let it cool and harden, and then melt it again.
Turn off the heat and add the rest of the ingredients, blending thoroughly.
Spoon the mixture into muffin liners, plastic sandwich containers, or other containers, depending on what shape will fit your suet feeder.
Store unused suet cakes in the freezer in plastic bags.

Tips For Making Suet Cake and Feeding Birds

If you make your own suet mix, there are some things you should keep in mind:

Suet becomes harder after it has been melted and cooled several times.
Fat will catch fire if it reaches too high a temperature. Heat suet and suet mixtures gently on the stove top or in the microwave—just until the fat is melted.
If soft fats such as margarine are added to the mixture, the suet may soften in warm outdoor temperatures. This is messy and it can soil birds’ feathers.
Fat can go rancid in hot summer weather—and rancid fat is not good for birds. It is best not to put it out during the frost free months. At other times when the weather is warm, check it regularly for signs of spoiling.
Vary the suet mix by substituting other things for the birdseed: dried fruit, chopped nuts, cracked corn, sunflower seed, etc.

Other Ideas for Feeding Suet

If you don’t have a suet cage, Saturn suet feeder, or other commercial design, you can improvise or make your own suet feeder:

Line a small bowl with the plastic mesh bag from onions, bulbs or other produce and then spoon suet mix into the bowl and let it harden. Then you can hang the mesh bag outside for the birds.
Find a large pine cone with lots of space between its seed scales. Set the cone on its broad end and drop suet mix into all the crevices. Let the suet harden and hang the cone outside.
Hang any shape of suet cake outside by threading a string through its center and hanging it from a tree.

Remember to hang your suet cake somewhere where you can see it easily and enjoy the birds.

Sources:

Attracting Birds. Woodier, Olwen. Vermont: Garden Way Publishing; 1981.

“Choosing Bird Food: Other Foods." Cornell Lab of Ornithology: All About Birds.

“These Holiday Recipes are Really for the Birds!” Petri, Ann Emmons. Organic Gardening; Dec 1996, p 60.

The copyright of the article Make Your Own Suet Mix for Birds in Wild Birds is owned by Rosemary Drisdelle. Permission to republish Make Your Own Suet Mix for Birds in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.