How to Make Your Own Suet to Feed Wild Birds

If you buy lamb, mutton, or beef fat from local farms that sell pasture-raised meat, the suet you make yourself will be much healthier for the wild birds than mass-produced suet from the store (undoubtedly from CAFOs). Don’t use pork or chicken fat because it is too soft and might melt onto bird feathers (plus make a mess on your deck.)

Keep the fat in the freezer (bagged or well wrapped) until you are ready to render it into suet. Take it out of the freezer, separate the pieces, and let it thaw a bit, but not all the way, since it is much easier to cut up when it is slightly frozen. Chop it into little cubes, about ¼ inch per side (or some people grate it, which is messier, but the smaller the fat pieces, the quicker it melts and the more suet you get out of it.) Put all these fat cubes in a crockpot set on high and cover. Stir occasionally. This part takes awhile.

When some of the fat has melted, set a paper coffee cup in each hole of a muffin tin and balance a tea strainer over one of the cups. Use a ladle to dip some liquid fat out of the crockpot and pour it through the tea strainer into the coffee cup. Fill the cup and then move the strainer and repeat with the next cup. When you can’t dip any more liquid fat out, put the cover back on the crock pot and put your muffin tin in the fridge. Let the fat melt some more and then repeat. If it’s getting too hot, turn the crockpot down to low.

Eventually, you will have gotten all the fat that can be rendered and the rest of the material in the crockpot can go in the compost. Once the suet has hardened in the coffee cups in the fridge, stack them into plastic bags and put them in the freezer to store until ready to feed. The suet will easily slide out of the cup and into your suet feeder. Do not put the hot suet into canning jars thinking to prevent the waste of paper coffee cups! We learned the hard way that the hard suet will NOT slide out of canning jars!