Wildlanders Birding Database

Alternatives to Animal Fat Bird Foods

Please Note: We have discontinued our efforts to establish a manufacture of wild bird suet products. We apologize for the inconvenience. The legalities, paper work, fees, licenses, permits and reporting requirements - as well as their changing nature and financial penalties for not 'doing it right' - are beyond our ability to follow or maintain as a small family business. We sincerely apologize to any and all potential clients who might have been interested in our products. We can only hope that the business environment might improve in the future and provide incentives for small business.

We encourage you to make your own alternative-suet products and hope to have some recipes here in the future. We might also suggest that there may be some issues with mad cow disease in beef products. Commercial feed products (which can legally utilize waste and diseased beef) may not be the best thing to be feeding our wild feathered friends.

For more information, search the web on "pet food" and "disease". Or you can visit the Animal Protection Institute.

Our current suggestion for wild bird feeds are what we call wild bird cookies. Composed, not of beef products, but of vegetable oils. When combined with flour and oats, they provide a solid form appropriate for winter feeding. Use any of your common cookie recipes, modifying the ingredients and trial feeding to see what the birds prefer (ie, low sugar). The benefits from vegetable oils, as opposed to animal oils or fats, are superior. The caloric content is not significantly different and there is no concern of pathogens (ex, prions of mad cow disease which we now find invading native deer, elk and other wildlife populations).

We at Wildlanders ask you to please reconsider your use of beef and other animal fat products in feeding your house pets and in feeding wild birds.

ken@wildlanders.com

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