Suet Recipe For Birds

One of our favorite things to do during the cold winter months is to feed and watch the birds in our back yard. It is amazing how many different species of birds that you can attract. Here is a simple and inexpensive suet recipe for birds that you can make right at home.

Most of the ingredients you probably have at home. Once made this recipe can be made put in any mold or form that you choose. This recipe makes approximately three 11-ounce cakes. This is about the same size as most suet cakes that you can buy at the store. Price-wise, that is comparable to some of the cheaper store-bought suet cakes too. However, our experience shows that the birds prefer this suet to some of the cheaper store-bought suet.

Suet Log Bird Feeder Savings

The real savings happens if you have a suet log bird feeder. The cost for one batch of this suet recipe is about $2.50. That is pretty close to the cost of one store-bought package of suet logs. That is a 66% savings and the birds really like this suet.

If you don’t want to make your own suet plugs, Menard’s has the best price I’ve found in our area (Michigan) at around $2.65. Most suet logs on line cost close to $4.00 for a single four-pack!

Don’t let the cost of suet logs deter you from buying or using a log feeder. The birds seem to gravitate toward them. And with either this recipe or the alternative option below, you can make any size suet cake or plug you need to fit your feeder, at a fraction of the cost!

If you are interested in an easy to make suet log bird feeder, click this link and read our article. It has free plans and step by step instructions on how to make one.

Homemade Suet Recipe

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Suet Recipe For Birds

Ingredients

Ingredients

• 1 Cup Suet Beef suet or lard
• 1 Cup Peanut butter crunchy
• 2 Cups Cornmeal
• 1 Cup Quick Oats
• 1 Cup Sunflower seeds Options: nuts (unsalted) and dried fruit (unsweetened)

Instructions

Instruction

1. Melt the suet in a pot on low heat.
2. Stir in the peanut butter until thoroughly melted.
3. Slowly mix in all the dried ingredients. It should be the consistency of very thick oatmeal. If you need to thicken it more just add a little more of the dry ingredients.
4. Allow mixture to cool enough to safely put in your molds.
5. Place in the freezer to cool and store.

Alternative Suet Recipe

Although the birds seem to love our homemade suet recipe, I have tried another alternative method you may be interested in. I have taken some of the cheaper, bulk suet cakes, melted them down, and added a few extra ingredients to add a little more variety for the birds. We had some stale peanuts we saved in the freezer for just such an occasion. The results were very good.

By melting down a half a box (5 cakes) of inexpensive, store-bought suet cakes I was able to turn roughly $3.50 worth of suet into $12 worth of different sized suet products. Just by adding 1 cup of sunflower seeds and 1 cup of partially crushed peanuts to five 10.5 ounce melted suet cakes I was able to make one large suet cake and two trays of suet plugs. That method offers significant savings as well.

The new reformed suet cakes and plugs firmed up nicely and the birds love them. If nothing else this gives you another option to help feed your little feathered friends. The short video below shows the results of this alternative method and describes some of the savings you can get. I hope you take the 1:38 to see how it turned out.

Tips For Making Suet Logs

If you use our suet recipe, or out the alternate recipe, for a log feeder, I have a few recommendations that could help.

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