I have successfully made a lot of suet for my birds for two years. I get
free beef fat from the local butcher with meat scraps attached. I use the
pure tallow for soap making but after the big chunks cook down a bit, I put
it into my high powered blender and break it down into a think porridge type
of consistency. Then I run it all through a sieve and whatever is still
solid in the sieve, I add peanut butter and bird seed, whatever I have on
hand, mix it up, and lay it into a cake pan and freeze it. When it is about
half frozen, I take it out and cut it into suet feeder sized blocks, then
freeze it the rest of the way. Once frozen, I break the chunks up and freeze
them again and put them in zip lock baggies. One cake pan yields about 6 or
8 blocks depending on size of pan. The tallow left over I boil again with
salt water a couple of times and get pure white soap quality tallow which
works great for soap making (or candle making if you add parafin).
Hope this helps.
(as a tip, if it's cold outside, I put the tallow/water in a pan and leave
it out over night. The tallow is a nice block on top and the impurities have
sunk to the bottom of the pan in a jelly like stuff which is easy to scrape
off and throw away as it is full of toxins.)
The birds love this. I have also thought to grind up soup making bits from
chicken or turkey carcases and add it for protein. There is enough fat left
in the tallow leavings to solidifiy the mixture. I can't keep it in stock as
the birds will go through 2 blocks every 3 days or so.
Hope this helps. Di
----- Original Message -----
From: "DAN-TAMMY BOWDEN" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Rendering Suet
Dorene,
I think I would experiment with mixing the bird fats, four-legged fats,
flour, and birdseed. The two types of fat should mix well when hot, then
when mixed into flour & seeds it would make a cake that should hold
together well. And flour is relatively inexpensive, although I don't know
the price of birdseed.
Dan
CREATION SPEAKS
Inviting man to the heart of God through the biblical mandate to care for
creation
www.creationspeaks.org
----- Original Message -----
From: Alliums
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 10:29 AM
Subject: [Community_garden] Rendering Suet
Hi, Folks!
No one else is talking, so I'm taking up space! :-)
We decided to try Mike's advice on fruit tree bug control and are putting
suet feeders in our fruit trees to get them used to patrolling the trees
and
hopefully, in the Spring, eating those bugs. So far, the chickadees seem
to
really be enjoying it - I'm seeing more chickadees than I've ever seen at
the community garden.
However, when I'm paying top prices for grass-fed, free-range local meat
at
the farmer's market, it seems a waste to go out there and buy suet blocks
for the birds. So, how do people render their own suet?
Right now, I'm skimming off the fat and then putting it in a pie pan in
the
oven whenever I'm cooking something to boil off the water (too cheap with
energy to boil the fat on it's own on the stovetop! ;-)) This seems to
be
working with four-legged meat products (lamb, beef, pork), but no so well
with poultry (chicken, turkey, etc). I can't get the poultry fat to
render
down such that it's not a thick liquid at room temperature.
Now, if I lived in a more reliably cold region, I'd just shove it into
the
suet feeder and let the cold weather keep it solid. But here in
Southeastern PA, where it's 20 degrees one day and 50 the next, I'm
afraid
that I'll have chicken fat leaking out of the feeder and dripping onto
the
branches/ground which will probably attract rats, rather than chickadees.
Any advice appreciated!
Dorene
Dorene Pasekoff, Coordinator
St. John's United Church of Christ Organic Community Garden and Labyrinth
A mission of
St. John's United Church of Christ, 315 Gay Street, Phoenixville, PA
19460
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ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and
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The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's
services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out
how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org
To post an e-mail to the list: [email protected]
To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription:
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