How to make your own Fat Balls for wild birds

[ernest_charles]

This mix should make 4-6 small fat balls depending on chosen container size.

You will need:
100g Bird Seed – Our Wild Bird Special Mix is great value and full of goodness
50g plump Sultanas/Raisins
50g Peanuts blended or Peanut Granules
50g rolled oats
Digestive biscuits blended
200g stale bread, blended into crumbs
Optional un-salted bacon rind/fat
½ lb lard
Cleaned-out yogurt pots
Natural, un-dyed string or twine
Sharp pencil
Large mixing bowl
Saucepan
Wooden spoon for mixing
Scissors
Instructions:
In a large bowl, mix the blended biscuits, stale breadcrumbs and Peanuts or Peanut Granules, Sultanas/Raisins, Wild Bird Seed Mix, oats and optional bacon fat to a bowl and mix well with a wooden spoon.

Place the ½ unsalted lard into a saucepan (large enough to fit the dry ingredients in), and gently heat on the hob. Once much of the lard has melted, turn off the heat and begin to add your ingredients to the pan slowly, mixing as you go until it is all combined.

Leave to cool slightly, and whilst you do, take your clean yogurt pot/s and carefully pierce a hole through the middle of the bottom (you can place a blob of blue-tack on the outside of where you will pierce through to help with this process). Thread a piece of string through the hole you’ve made and tie a large knot on the outside of the yogurt pot. Make sure that the string is long enough to at a minimum reach the top of the pot, but ideally long enough so that you can use once cooled to hang on a branch or feeding station arm. Tug gently to ensure that this is securely in place.

Next, simply spoon the mixture into the pots, ensuring that you string remains in the middle of the pot and protrudes from the opening at the top. Compress the mixture so that it is compact and simply repeat until you’ve filled your pots. Once done, place the filled pots into the fringe until solidified. Ideally, leave overnight to ensure that they harden sufficiently.

The next day, simply cut your newly made fat balls from the fridge and hang around your garden. The final step is to put the kettle on, make a cuppa and watch as a glut of wild birds feast on your nutritious, home-made fat balls.

[Catherine]

Have copied the recipe.

Sounds do-able, so will let yopu know how it goes, Rolf!

(Just need to buy sultanas or raisins. Never have them in the cupboard.)

[rolf]

Ahh, you should never be without raisins in the cupboard Catherine. I have them for my porridge in the mornings, adding to mixed nuts as snack and cooking the odd bread and butter pudding.

[Catherine]

I'm really impressed, Rolf!

I don't eat raisins or sultanas - apart from when they are well-disguised in Christmas cake/pudding. I guess that is a result of my father enjoying 'fly cemeteries' when I was young, and his telling us there were dead flies in the centre of these cakes - no doubt to keep us from eating his favourites!

If I have porridge, it is taken the Scottish way - oats cooked in water only, with a pinch of salt added then. Only milk added to it when enjoyed!

(Only southern softies add sugar - YUKK! )

[rolf]

LOL, yep I'm a southern softy, or is that southern sophisticate? I do cook only with water and a pinch of salt, then eat with milk (skimmed now) and a little sugar, sometimes though, I add some nutmeg during cooking if I feel like a change. To eat it without sugar I'd need more salt and I'm trying to keep salt intake to a minimum.