When there is frost and snow, it is advisable to feed our feathered friends extra, because the animals use up a lot of energy to maintain their body temperature. The important thing when you want to start feeding is that you consistently provide the birds with the right food through the end of winter. You can easily make fat balls yourself, without plastic waste and in pretty shapes.
Fat holds the fat ball together
Ingredients:
- Commercial grain mixture or alternatively one
- Seed mixture of two quarters sunflower seeds and one quarter hemp seed. The remaining quarter should be equal parts oatmeal, chopped nuts, small seeds, and mealworms.
- For the soft feed eaters, use a mix of wheat bran, berries, and rolled oats.
- Coconut fat, beef or mutton tallow and some cooking oil.
- small silicone baking molds. Shapes that already have a hole, such as mini Bundt cakes, are particularly practical.
- For hanging: toothpick or skewer and coconut thread.
preparation
- Place the baking cups on a baking sheet.
- Heat the fat in a saucepan. Mix the hard fats with cooking oil by one-fifth, the feed does not crumble.
- Fill the molds with the seed mixture about 1 cm high.
- Pour fat.
- Depending on the silicone mold used, insert a skewer or toothpick into the mixture.
- This remains in the feed mixture while it cools, resulting in a hole.
- Loosen the solidified food from the mold and carefully remove the skewer.
- Thread coconut thread through.
Since the coconut thread does not pose a risk to wild animals and weathers, you can safely hang these fat balls (9.99€) outdoors. However, make sure that the place you choose is in the shade, otherwise the fat could melt on warm winter days.
Make your own coconut shells and feeding bells
Alternatively, you can put the above mixture in halved coconut shells or flower pots. Put a branch through the eyes of the nuts or the drainage hole of the planter beforehand. The lining can be hung up on the upper part. The animals can hold on to the protruding part below while eating.
Then fill in the still soft feed mixture and let it harden completely. After that, you can fix the bell in a shady place.
tips
If you don't want to go through the hassle of making dumplings, you can use feeding stations and spirals. These are available in different versions, suitable for traditional dumplings without a net or the jars with bird's peanut butter, which are very popular with the animals.