Homemade Bird Suet that Birds Love!

We recently made two types of homemade suet. One recipe was from Birds & Blooms for Suet Cupcakes.

According to Birds & Blooms, "In the winter, birds benefit from a high-energy suet treat. Stacy Tornio, editor of Birds & Blooms, developed this recipe with her kids using cupcake liners to stay mess-free. They’re happy to report that the birds love it."

This recipe is, indeed, easy to make and the birds love it at our feeders as well. To make the suet cupcakes, you will need:

1 cup shortening
2 cups chunky peanut butter
5 cups cornmeal
Assorted nuts, birdseed or dried berries

To make a bird cupcake, melt 1 cup shortening and 2 cups chunky peanut butter over low heat.

Then mix in 5 cups cornmeal. Fill cupcake tins and top with your choice of nuts, birdseed or dried berries. Cool in the refrigerator.

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The second recipe we tried came from the Food website. It has more ingredients, but it is easy to make.

Ingredients

2 cups lard
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
2 cups quick-cooking oats
2 cups cornmeal
1 cup flour
1 cup raisins
1⁄3 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups wild bird seed

Directions

Melt lard and peanut butter over low heat.

Remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients. Pour into freezable containers (square feeders that suet comes in or cool whip tubs work well) and store in the freezer until ready to use.

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We hung many of them on the crabapple tree which has winter-persistent fruit. The birds will sit in this tree to wait for a turn at the feeders and eat the crabapples in the winter and spring.

Some of the suet fell to the ground as the birds ate it. The cardinals would pick up the pieces and eat them.

Some of the birds would sit right on the suet feeder. If you look closely, you can see a black-capped chickadee on one of the feeders.

Other birds were a bit too big for the feeders, so they sat on a nearby branch and would eat them from the feeder that way.

We definitely would make both recipes again  for the birds after seeing how much they enjoyed them. The only thing we would do different is put them in suet cages so that there's less suet that falls to the ground and that it is more difficult for the squirrels to take down the suet cupcakes and run away with them.