How to make Fat Balls for Garden Birds - Bird Food Recipe 

We couldn’t believe how easy it was the first time we tried. Good fun too!

Awesome 🤩 I love Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 hope your birds enjoy the fat balls

Good idea, the birds love them

Excellent, the birds must love the mix that you have of insects in yours.

Awesome, the birds will love those.

Thank you, your vanilla pods look fantastic

Thank you, you should find all the ingredients in the description with links too.

Thank you

Some people use suet or peanut butter but it must be without additives sweeteners or salts

check which foods to NOT feed your birds. Keep it natural

Thanks for watching. Just ordered a new mic which arrived today. This is only a hobby but happy to spend a little! We take our advice from the RSPB who say ‘Although bread isn't harmful to birds, try not to offer it in large quantities, since its nutritional value is relatively low.’ Let them know if you think they should adjust their advice. I’ve never seen lard that’s loaded with anything in the UK but plenty of alternatives are available.

4qi5wktsf

Until they are hard : usually overnight and then I store them somewhere cool / I keep mine in my conservatory until I need them

Vegetable suet and coconut oil work well

@@ThatsWhatWeCallTheGoodLife thanks for the reply

You’re welcome 😉

It’s high energy and keeps them together

Good question, we didn’t mention where we put them! We use a cage feeder which the birds cling to and peck through easily. They can also be placed in a mesh bag and hung from a branch.

@@ThatsWhatWeCallTheGoodLife Thank you for this video. It would have been lovely to see a photo of the fat balls in their place outside. But, I did enjoy learning how to make these for my birds.

@@camirichardson7485 thank you for your feedback! We are learning as we do this. I cannot put a picture in the comments here or add one to the video unfortunately. If you search Facebook and put #steveandsuzy in the search bar then you will see a good picture.

We’ve not had any squirrels in the garden but we do up the allotment / knowing the squirrels 🐿️ they’ll give anything a go

We use one pack which is 250g but the recipe can be flexed. We have just started blitzing up peanuts and putting them in. The birds seem to love them.

@@ThatsWhatWeCallTheGoodLife That would be 1 1/8 cups. Thank-you.

Could be / have you tried the combination of ingredients we use

@@ThatsWhatWeCallTheGoodLife yes, finally a squirrel found & ate, a couple blue jays, now how to keep squirrels from eating

Thank you

The fat is the lard in the ingredients. The birds always prefer the fat ones.

@@ThatsWhatWeCallTheGoodLife Oh lol, I understand now, thanks!

Never give the birds just bread but the RSPB advise that it’s ok as part of a mixed diet. The ingredients in bread are quite safe but they, like us, need more than just carbs.

Brown bread in small amounts wet bread I give

One of our first videos. We struggled with a solution to sound quality back then. Watch out for our new and improved video on this topic soon.

Good advice, there are plenty of better things that birds will eat. They love these fat balls every year.

It’s only in there as a binding agent and not the main feed. It absorbs the fat which is the high energy part of the recipe which they need this time of the year. Leave it out if you wish you will simply find the balls wetter to touch and may have to use less fat.

Thank you for your feedback / Since then we’ve got a go pro so sound has now improved

Thanks for watching! The RSPB website says; 'Although bread isn't harmful to birds, try not to offer it in large quantities, since its nutritional value is relatively low. A bird that is on a diet of predominantly, or only bread, can suffer from serious vitamin deficiencies, or starve.' This is why we use a small amount. You can easily substitute ingredients too.