If you really think you made enough or the winter then you must have made about a hundred pounds of it. I go through about 25-30 pounds of Lard 15-20 pounds of raw peanuts 5-6 boxesof oatmeal 6 12 oz jars of peanut butter 4/5 5 pound bags of dried dog food 4-5 5 pound bags of flour and all the sunflower seeds and chopped corn that I can stir in plus raisens dates and other sundarys ande still have trouble keeping up. Every bird that comes to my feeders including cardenals and robins love this suet, jim

I also go through quite a bit more of the suet mixture than I would have guessed. I make up a big batch thinking it will last me a while, but it never does. I end up making a new batch every other week. The Blue Jays take so much of it from the suet log I put out for the woodpeckers.

I guess I am on the conservative side putting out food for the birds - I have had a lot of sparrows lately so am being very cautious about what I make available. The only place I have put the suet is in the upside-down feeder.

Probably I will need to make more, I will just play it by ear and see how fast this stuff gets used up.

That's so wonderful that you are having success with your homemade suet!!!

I tried making my own, but it hasn't gone over so well with the birds. I save the drippings from my George Foreman grill, whenever I do steaks or burgers...but perhaps that isn't the right type of fat? I've mixed in organic peanut butter, corn meal, oats, seeds and cracked corn....but the birds still seem to prefer the store bought suet cakes. Perhaps I should try using actual lard instead.

jmc7104, I'm curious about the dog food....do you leave it in chunks or break the chunks up into smaller bits? Sometimes I run out of bird seed and suet...but I never run out of dog food...it'd be nice to be able to put some out in a pinch!

jiggreen I use a coffee grinder and grind it up into medium/ fine chunks and mix it all together. Any thing that is of any size gets run through an old food processor or the coffee grinder before going into the hot grease, mostly lard but also use other fat drippings with.
jim

I am new to birding and was surprised to see the dog food ingredient. Does it have to be dog food as opposed to cat food? It has been my assumption that cat food is predominantly protein and dog food is not??

Susan

Instead of making suet to fit the wire cages I make Marvel Meal & just smear it on the trunks of trees. Or plain, cheap peanut butter. The woodies, nuthatches, titmice, 'dees & (unfortunately)starlings love it. I do put out suet in the cages either store bought or plain unrendered suet, but if I don't bring it in at night the raccoons take cage & all.
Susan

I thought about spreading some sort of mixture on the tree trunk, too. I saw a brown creeper recently and it's not one of those birds that eat from the feeder but will probably eat a bark spread.

But, I am thinking that squirrels and raccoons will eat on the bark and damage the tree?

Paul

Sometimes I add the stuff at the bottom of the dried cat food container - where the nuggets have broken down and become crumbly and powdery - to the suet mixture. I have also added things like old cookies and dried bread (as long as they're not spoiled). An easy way to crush up these ingredients, is to put them in a heavy clear plastic bag (like a heavy ziploc), and crush them using a rubber mallet. This is also how I break up whole nuts into pieces - much easier than chopping.

I've got a suet cage with raw suet hanging on the side of the large Pin Oak. It is hooked on using screw eyes embedded in the tree and snap hooks. The raccoons have tried, but they can't pull it off the tree. The squirrels never bother the raw suet - don't seem interested in eating it, so no baffle needed.

we had french fries yesterday and i emptied the fry baby cooker that was vegtable oil. This morning i mixed vegtable oil with lots of oats and cornmeal and peanut butter and some old trail mix to make a thick paste. Put some in a deep lid on the platform feeder and put the rest on a stump. I has been snow showers here all morning and the most birds i've had in a long time. they are eating up the stuff very fast and have dumped extra seed on the stumps as they were cleaned off.

susanlynn48
Not to worry about the protene of dog food. It is more than made up for with the raw peanut meal oat meal and corn meal plus the lard is the primary ingredent that keeps them coming back most of the rest is just filler. As terrene so adaquetly stated almost anything in the food line which is not spoiled is usable. Even if a little old or stale. Most people are not going to eat a cerial or grain that has bugs (weavels) in it but if it is added to this nixture in the cooking process then it is a delicasity for the birds. jim

Thanks for the response, Jim!

The other day I mixed up some peanut butter, cornmeal(organic), a bit of bacon grease, a bit of molasses, some chopped apple, and made what I call "dough balls" like we used to for fish bait. It held together well, so I put about 4 golf ball size chunks in the wire suet feeder. Even the HOSPs are climbing all over that wire feeder to get to the dough balls.

I also bought some regular popcorn (not microwave; nothing in it) that I thought I would fix and toss out on the ground for the ground feeding birds.

Right now I am not able to get to the store to get seed. OKC had 14 inches of snow (unprecedented for us) and we are definitely not prepared for snow of this magnitude. We usually get ice that melts the next day, but it is going to be so cold for the next 10 days or so, so not much melting anticipated. Just trying to think up things I have available in the pantry to feed the birds.

Appreciate all the good info I am getting on this forum!

Susan

i have come up with lots of things since i retired again.
I bake corn bread to eat with beans or stew and my birds go crazy for crumbled cornbread. I had a part package of
mini marshmellow left over from making fruit salad and put a few out in the feeder and the birds were fighting over them. I had a box of raisen bran cereal that the raisens were dry so they got that and loved it. I save the heels from bread and toast and crumble it for them. We keep trail mix in the freezer cause we walk a lot when weather permits and i found out it is a treat for the birds. The chicadees like dry rolled oats sprinkled over the seed in the feeder.