Learn How to Make Suet for Wild Birds

Making suet cakes for wild birds is actually an easy task and suet can be provided for the birds in a number of ways - you don't even need a recipe! Just follow a few guidelines.

Western bluebirds, chickadees, jays, towhees, warblers, woodpeckers and more will come to your yard for suet treats in all seasons, but I suggest limiting homemade suet treats to winter use. It's far too easy for the stuff to melt or go rancid in warmer months.

What is Suet? 

Pure suet is the fatty tissue that gathers around a cow's kidney area. You may be able to get some from your butcher, but in a pinch you can use lard from the grocery store. If you use pure suet, you might like to work outside using an electric frying pan as the task can be smelly.

If you'd prefer to live without the smell, wild birds do enjoy strips of suet straight from the grocery store or butcher shop hanging from a tree branch.

Homemade Suet Cakes

Making homemade suet cakes is simply a matter of melting fat down to a pour-easy consistency, adding a few ingredients of your choosing, then pouring the mixture into a mold. The shape of the mold is determined by the type of suet feeder you'll use.

If you are using lard or shortening for homemade suet cakes, adding equal parts of peanut butter flour will help maintain correct consistency of regular suet cakes.

To this warm and pour-able mixture you could add rolled oats, bird seed, cornmeal, raisins, unsalted nuts and anything else you think the birds would enjoy. Then, pour your warm suet 'soup' into the mold (a bread pan where you could slice off bits for your store bought suet feeder, cupcake tins that you could pierce with wire and hang from a tree, etc.)

Keep any unused portions in the freezer for up to two months.

_{Source: Attract Wild Birds website}