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How do you make homemade bird food?

Thursday, 3rd May 2018

Garden birds, just like humans, like a good homemade meal. Many garden birdwatchers make mouth-watering tasty treats for birds that visit their garden. So, how do you make homemade bird foo

You can create lots of delightful homemade suet treats and - just as you probably enjoyed your Easter Eggs and hot cross buns - your garden birds would appreciate good homemade bird food.

With the following recipes, which we’ve created, we are sure you will have lots of fun in the kitchen and we’re sure the birds will be grateful for your efforts.

Recipe for Bird Cake

Ingredients

500g Fat (suet is best)
500g Haith's Birdcake Mixture
up to 750g of table scraps (Crumbs, cheese, nuts, sultana's ect.)

Equipment

Wooden Spoon
Saucepan
Wire or string
Yoghurt pots

Method

Carefully melt the fat in a saucepan
Place the birdcake mixture and scraps in a large saucepan
Add the warn fat and stir
Pour the mixture into the moulds and leave to cool and set - not forgetting to push a length of wire or string into the mixture whist it's still soft
When set, remove from the yoghurt pot and hang in the garden

Homemade Bird Balls

Ingredients

500g lard
300g peanuts - liquidised
5 cups peanut flour
6 cups oats
2 cups sunflower seeds
2 cups raisins

Method

Mix everything together
Roll into 5 or 6 small balls
Place in a feeder and wait for the birds

Haith’s Special Mix

Ingredients

500g of bird seed
3 x 320g suet feasts

Equipment

Wooden Spoon
Saucepan
String
Baking shapes/cutters

Method

Slowly melt the suet feasts
Add small amounts of seed until the right consistency is reached
Once you’re happy with the mix, very carefully spoon out the mixture and either pour into the moulds or make into your own shapes, not forgetting to add a piece of string if required
Chill until set

Anna’s Apple Suet Cookies

Ingredients:

225g Haith’s Suet Pellets
1 Slice of brown bread (crumbled)
A couple of digestive biscuits (crumbled)
1 finely cut red apple
200ml cold water

Method

- Place Haith’s suet pellets in an old pan and heat gently – do not burn
- Once soft, empty into a large bowl and mix in all of the water
- Now add all the other ingredients and mix well
- Mould your mix into cookie cutters
- Don’t forget to add the string as that makes it easier to hang them outside
- Allow to cool in the fridge before serving to the birds

Abbie’s Birdy Cupcakes

Ingredients:

100g Haith’s Golden Chorus
25g lard

Method

- Melt the lard into a pan and add Haith’s Golden Chorus Mix - stir in well
- Pour the mixture into cupcakes and leave to set
- Decorate with dried fruit for extra decoration
- Before serving, remove the cupcake cases
- Sit back and watch the birds enjoy their special treat

These three recipes are sure to make birds flock to your garden; however, we also sell ready-made products that are perfect to just place straight out into your garden. We encourage you to experiment making your own but we invite you to sit back and let us take the bird food making strain as that’s what we do best.

Here are a few off-the-shelf products to consider:

Co-Co Fat Feeders – half a coconut shell filled with seed and suet, ready to hang in your garden. Unwrap it and hang it and prepare for anything from tits and finches, Starlings and Long-tailed Tits, to swashbuckling Great Spotted Woodpeckers. If you hang it, they may come.

Mealworm Bird Cakes are ready to go - just unwrap and hang from a branch. Suet and dried mealworms are both bursting with calories. Feed suet throughout the entire year and particularly during the breeding season, during moulting and prior to migration not forgetting when temperatures drop below freezing. In fact 365 days a year!