Why not make your own fat balls for the birds?
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Discoveries, General care, Wildlife | 74 comments
Watching the birds feeding just outside the kitchen windows gives me enormous pleasure. Since the bird eating cat that used to lurk in our front garden has moved away there are many more ground feeding birds and quite often I spot mice collecting seeds. Mice in the shrubs are fine. When they come into the house they are a problem.We give the birds mixed seed and fat balls all year. We only put out peanuts in the colder non nesting months as baby birds can choke on peanuts. Finally my large tub of fat balls for the birds has run out. So I decided to make my own. My friend Bunty, pours off all her warm leftover fat into flat plastic containers and she strings these up for the birds. This works well in the depths of winter when it is freezing outside. I tried it once in the summer and the fat melted in the sunshine.
I had a bit of a sniff about on the Internet and discovered that lard or suet seems to be a good fat base for home made fat feeders. There is an interesting thread in the Wild About Britain forum with several recipes and useful suggestions such as adding raisins to the mixture.
I found an old coconut feeder knocking about in the barn. We buy wild bird seed in 25 kilo sacks. So I filled the half coconut shell with mixed seeds and poured the melted lard over the seed. I put it in the fridge to harden. It hangs in a sunny spot and has not melted. Lard is cheap, and the massive sacks of bird seed are under ?10. So this homemade mixture is so much cheaper than the commercially produced balls.
Yesterday I spotted a coconut in the supermarket. After we have gorged on coconut I plan to use the shells to make two more reusable bird fat feeders.
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Hi just wanted to say i really appreciate your warm forum on this subject.
Ive a few reasons why i wanted to make fat balls:
Staling nuts and a few slices of bread going to waste
An indoor cat who loves watching the birds
Ive been off ill a few days and fancied something creative around the back of my upper floor city flat rather than any more daytime tv
So the upshot is, happy eating birds, happy busied cat and rested and happy me.
Thanks so much for the time you™ve all put into the site, it really is appreciated far and wide x
can one use the fat from a george foreman grill run off to make these fat/suet balls??
Great idea, Amanda. You could pre melt the lard, heated and cooled is softer than the stuff straight from the pack. The kids could press the seeds etc into the lard. A bit of the hot lard that I was using dribbled out of the hole where the string is tied and when it had set I just scooped it up and put it into the shell. It didn™t melt in the sunshine.
The birds love the coconut feeder. The little shell doesn™t last long. The coconut that I bought is still waiting to be transmogrified into a couple of larger bird cafés.
I have made a bird box for my bird and i am going to make some Fat Balls and put it one my bird box
can one use the fat from a george foreman grill run off to make these fat/suet balls??
Just spent a load of money on fat balls will have a go and post how I get on
Hi All,
Just wanted to warn AGAINST using dessicated coconut. The UK Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) website states:-
“Desiccated coconut should never be used as it may swell once inside a bird and cause death.”
Their website has a great page advising what to feed birds and what types of food attract what types of bird. The website address is:-
http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/helpingbirds/feeding/whatfood/index.aspx
Hope this is helpful.
I have recently moved to bulgaria and have been amazed at the amount of birds here. I want to make the fat balls as i have a bird table that attracts loads of different birds. I have not seen fat balls here so i am making some this afternoon. We have even had a buzzard and a stork land in our garden. How lucky are we. many thanks for all the recipe ideas.
Hi just wanted to say i really appreciate your warm forum on this subject.
Ive a few reasons why i wanted to make fat balls:
Staling nuts and a few slices of bread going to waste
An indoor cat who loves watching the birds
Ive been off ill a few days and fancied something creative around the back of my upper floor city flat rather than any more daytime tv 🙁
So the upshot is, happy eating birds, happy busied cat and rested and happy me.
Thanks so much for the time you’ve all put into the site, it really is appreciated far and wide x
Tried making fat balls with lard – they are ignored and go mouldy. I’m about to try with suet.
Perhaps I’m offering too many alternatives – sunflower, seed/peanut mix, etc
Thanks for that Birdfrindly – I was actually going to use the fat from our dinner last night but my husband threw it out! He must have known better than me.
It was quite a while ago but I saw a coment in your thread asking if fat left over from roasts etc is safe to use. I just thought I’d answer that in case anyone else was thinking about it. The answer is NO, there is too much salt and danger of salmonella etc. See the article attached:
http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/details.asp?id=tcm:9-237136
Loving all the ideas by the way.