
Try These Homemade Suet Recipes!
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How about grinding up a tablet of Calcium Citrate, commonly used in humans to prevent osteoporosis, with a mortar and pestle and adding that to the mix? Birds need calcium also.
Thank you for bringing up the topic of calcium. Yes, birds indeed need calcium for egg-laying and other activities, with some birds seeking calcium more than others. There are supplements that one can get for pet birds, but we’d recommend talking to a vet or wildlife expert before giving any of these supplements or supplements meant for humans to wild birds.
As an alternative, there are wild bird foods that have calcium added. Or, Audubon and Cornell Lab of Ornithology suggest using eggshells from chicken eggs. Shells from hardboiled eggs are sterilized, but if you use shells from raw eggs, you will need to sanitize them first to eliminate any diseases, such as bacteria, which may sometimes be present. First rinse the shells. Then you can either boil them for 10 minutes or bake them on a baking sheet at 250 Fahrenheit for about 10 to 20 minutes until they are dry, not brown. Let them cool and then crush them into small bits (about the size of sunflower seeds). Scatter the pieces on the ground, or place on a dish or low platform feeder.
Doesn't anyone have an answer to my question about keeping squirrels out of my bird feeders?
Capsaicin will keep all mammals at bay. :)
Here's a video about just that topic. Good luck!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiQXq622XQc
How do you keep squirrels from eating the bird food? I even tried the spicy bird seed. That didn't even work! HA! HA!
Hi
Just wanted to make a comment on starlings not being to hang on upside down suet feeders. Unfortunately the starlings don’t know that they can’t hang from these devices! They do.
Wanted to let people know.
Much easier to purchase the suet cakes -- they are quite reasonably priced, especially when "on sale." They keep for a long time and can be used year-round. Birds love them.
In my area (central PA) millet in bird seed mixtures draws in the house sparrow which subsequently keeps them around my property for attacking bluebirds in the spring. For the past 4 years I have kept the grain out my feeders and last year I didn’t have any problems.
Years ago someone gave us a suet cage that came with a cake of suet that was packaged in a disposable almost square, clear plastic that works great as a suet mold. A few years ago I bought a cake of orange suet hoping the orioles would like it (seems like everyone did) that also provided us with another mold. After they firm up in the freezer we pop out the cakes, wrap them in plastic cling wrap and keep them in the freezer until they are used, thus freeing up the molds for the next batch. We use various wild bird seed mixes, usually with added sunflower seeds in our cakes. They are very popular with the woodpeckers, cardinals and squirrels. We also put out a critter mix on the ground and in platform feeders, bird seed mixes in hanging feeders and nyger in hanging feeders and distribute a critter mix on the ground. We go through about 350 lbs over the course of three months or so.
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