Want to make my own suet feeder size woodpecker food (1 Viewer)

I have a bunch of peanuts, and I would like to make my own woodpecker treat suet.

I does not really have to have suet. I think I could make it with vegetable oil, peanut butter, and peanuts, and other stuff.

I was thinking I could use old suet boxes as a mold. Anybody know how to do this?

I came across this recipe, does it seems reasonable? One problem: I don't know what proportions of each ingredient.

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* lard
* peanut butter
* cornmeal
* flour (optional)
* peanuts
* bird seed

To make your own suet I usually use lard melted with peanut butter. Then add cornmeal and a little flour to thicken it. Next add anything you might have in your cupboards; dried fruits, fresh fruits such as cranberries, apples, raisons, applesauce, oatmeal Throw in nuts of any kind, cocoanut, and some birdseed. My Mockingbird loves this along with the woodpeckers, wrens and even chickadees have tried it.

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Another recipe. I like that this has hot pepper, might help keep squirrels away.

If any of you make your own suet cakes, I have a recipe that includes crushed red hot peppers

* 2 cups crisco
* 2 cups chunky peanut butter
* 3 cups oatmeal
* 3 cups bird seed
* 6 tbs crushed hot pepper, I use habanero peppers
* 2 cups shelled peanuts, chopped apples, or dried fruit, what ever you might think the birds will enjoy
* cayenne powder

Melt crisco and peanut butter, mix in the rest of ingredients
Press into two 9 by 13 baking dishes and freeze for 2 hours or until firm
Cut into squares to fit your feeders
roll in cayenne powder and serve to your feathered friends

You don't really need a precise recipe. Just mix crisco and penut butter and melt, then add in peanut (I would run them through a food processor to grind them up a bit), cornmeal, oatmeal, and flour till the mixture is no longer runny and you are done. None of the ingredient is compulsory, just use whatever you have.

FYI when I tried homemade version, the house sparrows are all over it, so I stopped. Now that I have commercial cakes out, nobody likes it.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be real precise, but you do need to use all solid ingredients... oil is not going to work in any kind of warm weather.

Personally, I'd prefer animal fats (either lard or suet) over vegetable shortening. Not because I think Crisco will poison your birds... more that I think they are more likely to find animal fats tastier. Crisco is designed to have pretty much no taste whatsoever.

In warmer weather, you'll need more cornmeal to keep everything together.

sirwired said:

In warmer weather, you'll need more cornmeal to keep everything together.

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It is getting warmer. I see this no-melt recipe all over the web:

• 2 cups quick-cooking oats
• 2 cups cornmeal
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup lard
• 1 cup crunchy peanut butter

1. Do I really need the sugar?
2. I want to add a lot of peanuts. To do so, think I will need more lard and/or peanut butter
3. What is it that keeps it from melting? Cornmeal? Oatmeal? Flour?
4. Can I add the chiles to this recipe?

As a cheap, lazy, and generally incompetent suet chef. I am doing the following, so far:

1. I use old commercial suet cake packages as a mold. Makes everything the right size for the suet feeder, no cutting stuff.

2. I use lard, not actual suet. Suet is just too much trouble.

3. I make my own for-birds-only PB. I want to get rid of peanuts anyway. It's very easy to do, and saves a significant (to me) amount of money. Just put the feed peanuts in a food processor with a little vegetable oil.

3. So far, I have not used flour, or sugar. Just PB, lard, quick oats, cornmeal, and peanuts. But, it seems to fall apart, and melt in warm weather.

4. So far, have not tried adding hot chiles. Squirrels have not been too big a problem - yet.

BTW: my suet cakes are, mostly, attracting grackles. No woodpeckers. Not sure what happened to the northern flicker that used to come around.

I would increase the amount of lard to about 2 cups, 1 cup crunchy peanut butter, 1-2 cups of nuts, at least 2 cups of cornmeal and 1 cup or more of flour. It's the flour that makes the dough not melt and holds it's shape. I do not put sugar in mine and I don't use oatmeal.

Where do you live? I hear that in the East, the Northern Flicker doesn't usually come to the feeder but the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker will. I live in the Pacific Northwest, our flickers eat suet all day long, but our Red-breasted Sapsucker will never come to the feeders.

DownyWP said:

Where do you live?

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Thanks for the advice.

I live in Denver, Colorado. I mostly saw the flicker in the winter. He would eat from the ground, eat from a platform feeder that was too small from him, he would even eat from a finch sock. I bought a really nice woodpecker feeder, with tail prop and all, he ignores that.

I have not seen, or heard, from him in about a month. Hope he's okay.

If you can get a natural, not treated, log about 4 - 6 inches in diameter and about a foot long and drill half inch ( ish ) holes, about 2 inches apart, all over the sides then stuff them with the suet mix and hang it up ( I usually screw in an eyed bolt in the top and thread some twine through ) it mimics the natural feeding niche of Woodpeckers.

Chris

walterbyrd said:

Thanks for the advice.

I live in Denver, Colorado. I mostly saw the flicker in the winter. He would eat from the ground, eat from a platform feeder that was too small from him, he would even eat from a finch sock. I bought a really nice woodpecker feeder, with tail prop and all, he ignores that.

I have not seen, or heard, from him in about a month. Hope he's okay.

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Oh I am such an idiot, your avatar clearly states where you live...|:S| I do believe the flickers are nesting right now, they're busy looking for bugs and ants for their nestlings I would image.

And I agree with trying a branch and drilling a hole and stuffing in the homemade mixture. I have mounted this branch by screwing it onto a platform, then fitted into a large pot and sealed in with rocks and gravel. For years now, the woodpeckers bring their young to feed at my feeders, Pileated, Hairy, Downy and Flickers. The only one that I see but never feeds is the Red-breasted Sapsucker. Below is the Hairy Father feeding his young:

http://www.pbase.com/downywp/image/128793023

The mixture I use is 2 block of lards (about a pound total in weight), melt down and add about half a mug of crushed peanuts, half a mug of oats and half a mug of flour. Mix it all up and add more peanuts and oats in roughly equal measure until the mixture is starting to turn from a liquid to a solid. I pour into muffin cases and store in the fridge until needed.