Pepper Suet – Keeping Squirrels from Your Suet Feeder

Winter is a tough time of year for the birds in our yards. The normal sources of food for birds are tough to come by. The bushes have no berries, the insects have gone in hiding for the winter, and the snow and ice often covers what little food is naturally available. So we look for ways to feed the birds in the winter time, and suet feeders are often a great choice.

Pepper suet is one way to help them along with a suet feeder.

Bird suet is a high energy food that is naturally suited for use in the winter time. The suet is made by rendering the fat from mutton or beef products, and is often mixed with other high energy foods like peanuts to create a high fat, high protein product that stands up well to the cold temperatures. In fact, naturally rendered suet can start to go rancid at temperatures above 70 degrees, so it's often thought of as a wintertime food. These days there are suet products that have been formulated to hold up better in the summertime, so you can use it year round if you like, but it's not all natural suet.

The problem is that, as with many bird food products, the squirrels think it's a great feast as well, and keeping them away from your suet feeder can be a problem.

Nature has provided an ingenious solution. It turns out that over the years, peppers have developed their heat by creating capsaicin, the chemical responsible for the "hotness" of peppers and other capsicums. But it has almost no impact on birds, so they eat it at will. But the mammals like squirrels can find it most offensive.

This leads us to a simple solution for keeping the squirrels and other rodents out of our suet feeders, and that is to simply add make a pepper suet. The birds are unaffected, but the feeder pests can't tolerate it. No baffles, no cages, and no squirrels.

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