SUET FEEDERS, THE WINTER FEEDING STATION

Winter time and the trees have dropped their leaves, the insects and grubs are hiding in their natural hiding places, and if there is something out that a bird might eat it is often hidden.

A great choice for feeding birds in winter is a suet bird feeder let's look at a the advantages of suet. Why use suet, what is suet, and why use it in a winter time bird feeder?

Suet has advantages for uses in winter, it holds up in cold weather well and don't start to melt til temperatures above 70 degrees F. Suet has a lot of fat content so it has a lot of calories, and you can mix it with additional high energy foods such as peanuts to provide another protein source. A large suet cake will last for a relatively long time so you don't have to bother with constantly refilling the feeder.

Suet comes from raw beef or mutton fat, often made from the fat found around the loins and kidneys. It was a common material hundreds of years ago, settlers found many uses for it like making candles. The beef parts has to go through a process called rendering in order to be useful for most applications. Rendering is a process where the fat is cooked and the results is a wax like material that can be shaped and used in a variety of ways.

Once you have the raw suet, it is usually prepared in a block similar in shape to a sandwich. To this you can add other ingredients like bird seed and peanuts which are mixed in so they are embedded in the block. This results in a block of high energy food that will survive well in the wintertime. You should note it can spoil in the summer heat, so don't leave it out in summer. Most people will just purchase the suet blocks, but you can also find a variety of suet recipes which are tailored for different types birds.

Usually a suet feeder looks like a small wire cage feeder where the suet block is placed. This may be placed on the trunk of a tree or suspended from a branch. Another common style is a bird feeder that has the usual hopper for seed, and has suet cages on the sides to hold the cakes. Another way you can use suet it to smear it onto pine cones which can be hung from a branch.

Suet feeders are often used to attract many types of birds, including woodpeckers, goldfinches, cardinals, thrushes, jays, bluebirds and wrens. Often they will also attract starlings, which some people don't care for. If you don't want to attract starlings you might consider using a suet bird feeder that only allows access to the food from the bottom, since starlings can't hang upside down. If you end up having problems with squirrels in your feeder you need to make sure it can't be accessed by climbing, use baffles at the bottom of feeder, and place it seven feet away from anything a squirrel can jump from this will help keep them away.

Suet feeders come in a variety of styles, ranging from simple cage feeders that simply hang from a tree branch, to decorative styles that can be freestanding in your yard.