1. Visit your local butcher and ask for some beef or pork suet - most just throw it away and will gladly give you some. We order our beef and pork by the side (half an animal at a time), so I get all the interesting leftover bits too. You can also just save what you trim off your meat and freeze it until you have enough for a feeder if you don't have a butcher near you (I've never asked a grocery store, but they might give you some too).
2. Render the suet by chopping it up into small pieces, and melting it slowly in a pot or slow cooker. Make sure it's not too hot- don't boil it.
3. Once it's melted strain out the bits that refused to melt, and any meat pieces that were left. The melted suet will be mostly clear, while the chunky bits will be obvious.
4. Pour into a metal or glass dish, and pour in as much bird seed as will fit. Give it a stir so every seed is coated. You'll notice from the photo below that the sunflowers seeds float - that's fine.
5. Either leave it where it is to cool down or if you're like me and are impatient, you can risk moving it to somewhere cooler. I say "risk" because hot fat burns like hell- don't spill it. Spatter cleanup is a bitch, too.
6. Once it's fully and truly room temperature (or frozen, or just cold), you can either cut it up to fit into your current suet feeder or be lazy innovative and wrap some mesh or chicken wire around it to hang the single huge block. This way I dont have to keep refilling that little holder! It's slightly craptastic looking, but lucky for me birds aren't very judgmental. :)
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