Bird Food Recipe: Homemade Suet

Suet is the perfect bird food for the winter months, when birds’ food sources start to dwindle. Here’s how to make suet for your backyard birds! Suet is especially loved by nuthatches, woodpeckers, wrens, chickadees, cardinals, and most insect-eating birds. What is Bird Suet, Suet is essentially a solidified mix of fats, which birds eat to stay warm. Particularly in winter, suet is a valuable bird food. You can use almost any seed or grain, mixed with beef fat, lard, or natural peanut butter.

A basic suet combines equal parts of beef fat and assorted birdseed. Put it in a tuna or cat food can to chill (or freeze) until it’s hard enough to hold its shape, then release it into a wire suet cage or sturdy mesh bag. For a fancier suet, add natural peanut butter to the mix.

You can also bind cornmeal or oatmeal with natural peanut butter and spread it into holes drilled in a post or log. Birds also like dried fruits, so consider adding raisins, currants, apricots, or citron. Mix all ingredients together and cook for a few minutes. Pour into small containers (tuna fish cans are good), and refrigerate or freeze until needed.

Mixture can also be stuffed into 1-inch holes drilled in small logs to hang from trees. The recipe can be made all year long as long as you accumulate fat. Fasten containers securely to trees or feeders. Note: Suet should be used only in very cold weather so that it does not become rancid. If you live in a warm climate, we do not recommend using homemade suet because it will spoil too quickly. In this case, it is safer to purchase commercial suet cakes (which are already treated so they won’t spoil).

Plus it is so easy anyone can do it. So how do we do it, First take as much white icing as you require for the colour you are going to be using. Next you need to make a small hole in the top of this ball by pressing your finger into it.

Into this hole you need to add a few drops of the colouring you require. Then you knead the icing until all the food colouring has been absorbed into it and you have a consistent colour to your icing. These steps need to be repeated until you have the depth of colour you are after. The darker you want the colour the more times you need to repeat the steps.

Please note that if you add too much food colouring to your icing in any one step then this will result in your icing becoming too soft and sticky to work with effectively. Better to take your time than to waste icing by rushing. Colouring your icing is a great activity to get on with while the cake is cooking. Very relaxing, and if you are frustrated with anything a few throwing actions or punched to the icing is great therapy.

Some people do and some don’t - be careful with this because it can run your price much higher than it should be at this point. When you are established you can consider adding salaries for yourself and any employees you may need to hire. As long as you are baking to order you won’t have to figure in the cost of unsold products - an expense that commercial bakeries have. Once you have all of your costs broken down per item add them all up. This is how much it costs you to make each item.

In order to make a profit you have to make more than the total cost. On average this is done by multiplying the cost times three or four. 3.75 in order to make a profit. Before you absolutely decide how much to charge for your items check the bakeries and other home bakers in the area to get an idea of what they are charging. You should not charge too much more or less than the going rate. Yes, but the hours you spend on pricing your inventory to ensure a profit will pay off in the long run. If you have sold baked goods from your home what are your best pricing tips,