I make a home-made suet/lard/peanut butter mixture for the birds every winter. I used to put it in the suet log, but after 5 years, the log has discolored and fallen apart, so now I crumble the suet up into little nuggets and put them in a tray.

All the birds except for the Finches love this mixture. Every winter a small flock of Bluebirds come to feed almost daily on the mixture.

In large glass bowl, I melt about 16 oz rendered suet or Snowcap lard in the microwave. While it's still hot I add 16 oz peanut butter and it melts into the hot fat. Then I add flour, corn meal, crushed nuts, ground egg shells, and assorted other goodies. You can add raisins or currants, sunflower seeds, oats, sugar or jam, old dried cat food, etc.

I try to achieve a texture like play-doh - it holds together when mushed, but crumbles into nuggets. It looks like this:

i always make my own suet mix and mash it into the metal green cages and hang it from a limb. but this year a gang of magpies have figured out that they can take turns flying up and hanging on just long enough to jab their strong bills in a few times befoe they fall off and scatter a lot of the suet on the ground and then other ones do the same and in 5 to 10 minutes can completly empty the cage. they then eat and carry off all of it from the ground. i used to have a homemade cage feeder that i could put the cage in or a pan or a feeder in the spacing kept out the bigger birds. But a whirlwind tore up the cage feeder and scattered it across the yard. I guess i'll have to make time to build a new one.

The peanut butter recipes sound great, I'll have to give them a try this winter and see if we attract any new visitors. Terrene, do you toast your egg shells first?

Hi Seashore, I collect eggshells continuously, throwing them in a container next to the stove. When they are completely dry, I mash them down with a spatula. Before using them I sterilize them in the microwave for a couple minutes. Not sure this is necessary though, because any bacteria that might have been on the residue on the eggshell, has probably long since died off because the eggshells are dry as a bone by the time I use them. Then I blend them in the blender until they are the consistency of coarse sand.

It adds grit and calcium to the suet mixture. Is this necessary for the birds? I'm not really sure - but probably helpful during nesting season. At the very least, you can throw the crushed eggshells out in a bird feeding area, and they will likely pick at them.

i used lots of hard boiled eggs for pasta salads and potatoes salads and deviled eggs ect and the boiled egg shells i crush and put out near the feeders and they disappear the same day. I also see the birds often eating sand and small gravel on my driveway summer or winter. Birds have a craw or gizzard that if you cut one open you will see it filled with sand or grit or pebbles that help the birds to digest the seeds and nuts and foliage they eat.
the only times we kept the eggshells picked up and away was when we raised chickens and ducks and geese and turkeys
at the farm as some birds would cannabalize nests and eat the eggs. So we would get crushed oyster shell from the feed store to give them the calcium and grit they need.

I also do a suet mixture of lard, flour, peanut butter, cream of wheat, rolled oats, chopped raisins or any dried fruit such as apples, chopped sunflower seeds, wheat germ, honey, molasses or sugar, corn meal, and sometimes I add crushed fritos (someone said the Juncos like it),

I rendered my own suet this year from the butcher, but the birds don't seem to like it as well as the lard or crisco based suet I've made in the past.