Posts Tagged: suet recipe

Attract More Birds With Homemade Suet

Attract more birds to your yard with this easy to make homemade suet

You can make homemade suet quickly and easily to attract more birds to your yard. You’ll find lots of birds love suet, not just woodpeckers. Here’s a recipe you can make at home.

Our woodpeckers love our suet!

Harry woodpecker eating homemade suet from a hole in a tree
Close up of a hairy woodpecker eating homemade suet from a hole in a tree

We’ve had thrashers, nuthatches, chickadees, titmice and more feeding at our suet feeder.

White-breasted nuthatch eating homemade suet from a hole in a tree.

No-Melt Suet

Yield:   5 cups

Time:    10 Minutes

Ingredients

    2 cups quick-cooking oats
    2 cups cornmeal
    1 cup flour
    1 cup lard or melted suet
    1 cup peanut butter

Directions

Melt the lard and peanut butter together over medium-low heat on the stove. Keep the heat low, cleaning up scorched peanut butter is a mess.

Combine the dry ingredients.

Add the dry ingredients to the melted fats.

The original recipe suggests pouring into a square pan about 2 inches deep. I found a few commercial yogurt containers (that hold a couple gallons). I make a double batch in one of them. It stores nicely in an unheated garage.

To serve, just scoop out some of the mix and press it into a rough square and put it in like a commercial suet cake.


Options

Some people use bacon grease instead of the lard. I’ve seen suggestions that the salt may be bad for birds. I suspect few birds live long enough to worry about atherosclerosis, but you may want to err on the side of caution.

Several of the recipes I found suggest chopping up raw peanuts. I substituted crunchy PB.

You can add dried fruit, berries or mealworms to the mix. I’ve experimented with a variety. Birds eat it readily with or without the additions.

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