I love making things from what I already have in my house, without buying anything new, things that are secondary uses for what might eventually become waste. When we fry up some bacon, there’s always some leftover grease. What do we do with that bacon fat? We turn it into suet for our wild birds.
Our bacon comes from grass-fed natural sources with no added sugars or chemicals. It’s about as healthy as bacon can get. So, I’m happy to share the grease with our little feathered friends who in winter do need an added boost of calories.
First, save the plastic holder for bird suet that commercial suets come in. If you don’t have any, ask in your local Buy Nothing group for the square plastic packaging for suet. This way, you’ll be able to use that plastic container as your future mold to fit into the suet feeder.
Here’s our recipe:
- Fill 3/4 of a plastic suet mold with any kind of bird seed.
- Collect the melted liquid fat from your bacon grease. You can keep it in a jar until you have about 2 cups of it, and melt it. Or, simply pour the not-too-hot grease into your plastic suet mold with seeds in it. Fill the suet mold with your grease.
- Place the plastic suet mold filled with seeds and bacon grease in the freezer.
- When the suet is completely frozen, take it out of the suet mold and place it in your suet feeder. Done!
We sometimes add peanut butter, old flour, nuts, berries, anything that birds would like. 
Your little tweeties will love their suet and you won’t have to buy any more plastic-packaged suet again!
Pioneering The Simple Life 
Bird charities in England advise strongly against bacon fat. This is from the RSPB website:’Garden birds are practically unable to metabolise salt. It is toxic to them in high quantities and affects their nervous system. Under normal circumstances in the wild, birds are unlikely to take harmful amounts of salt. Never put out salted food onto the bird table, ‘. I’m assuming American bacon is, like British, quite highly salted.
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I was researching this today to see if bacon grease is ok for the birds and didn’t see anything mentioning the salt content. The bacon we use is not a high salt version, for what it’s worth, as I try to limit our salt intake. I’ve made suet from pure lard, too, and the birds keep coming back for both. I wonder if the commercial suets have salt content, too? Will check. Ok, will do some more research!
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I imagine bacon forms a more important part of the average Brit diet than it does in America which is perhaps why British sources mention it. I know that birds do not reject salty foods, which I guess is part of the problem as they don’t seem to know it’s not good fo them!
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What happens when temps get to 60 degrees as on a sunny afternoon? Peter
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We had that yesterday, in full sun, and the suet retained its shape and stayed in the cage. We only feed suet in the winter months, too, to augment the birds’ diet.
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I make my own suet food by rendering beef fat and using the lard in the same manner you use bacon fat. It gets a little messy when the days get warmer and the fat starts melting down on the tree trunk.
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