[LovesBassets]

Hi all,

I'm hoping there's a wild bird person out there that can help me with this. I have 5 suet feeders around my house and a horde of woodpeckers, titmice, and grosbeaks that just chow it all down. At $1.49 for each suet cake -- and with winter coming -- I'm thinking maybe it would be cheaper for me to make my own suet. Does anyone have a recipe for homemade suet?

Thanks

[MTHead]

I found this on line (the cakes tend to go on sale for 79 99 cents near me, so I don't have any experience with making my own):

Melt together 1.5 cups of crunchy peanut butter (Note: the birds don't mind at all if you use the cheap store brand!) and 1 cup of shortening or lard. To the melted mixture, add 2 cups of plain cornmeal and 2 cups of flour. Now comes the fun part. You can leave the mixture as it is, or toss in birdseed, dried fruits, old cereal, oatmeal, etc. Place it in a suet feeder or scrape onto pine cones. This suet is great because it doesn't melt on the hottest days, and any leftover can be frozen until it's needed.

[Michelle1210]

we use peanut butter too and scrape it into pine cones then roll the cones in bird seed....and hang them around the yard.