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

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.

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