?...peanut butter for birds

Can I use regular store brand peanut butter? Should I use fresh ground without sugar? That's much more expensive but cheap PB seems like it wouldn't be good for them. I am going to try some suet cakes from lard and wanted to mix in PB.

I use 'whatever' (Jiff mostly) peanut butter, usually the bottom of jars that DH thinks is too stale, he loves fresh peanut butter. If a store brand is on sale I buy that for the birds. Since the recipe I have for bird cakes calls for added sugar I don't worry about the sugar. I have read they use the sugar for energy - hummingbird nectar is loaded with sugar. I worry the price of PB is going to skyrocket with that salmonella plant declaring bankruptcy.

I'd be more worried about salt content than sugar content. Most birds (seabirds excepted) can't cope with salty food anything like as well as people can.

Resin

Thanks...I decided to stick with the PNB I eat, just plain old ground up peanuts...no added salt or suger. I never even gave salt a thought!

me either, oh well I'm a puddin head :-)

Well so am I, then. I worried about it when making suet and DH offering his bacon grease, but I never thought about the sodium content of good ol' PB!
Just checked the Skippy jar, it has: 150mg per 2T (32g)

I'd just stick with the major brands too, given the recent salmonella outbreak.

I used some honey in my suet.

Jiff Extra Crunchy has 130 mg sodium in 2 tbsp, when I make the cakes I use anywhere from 2 tbsp to 1/2 cup pb in a recipe that makes 12 cakes. It all depends on how much is left in the bottom of the jar when DH declares it stale. Funny, but I knew enough to buy unsalted peanuts. I like the unsalted better myself.

What I do is...I get a jar of "basic" peanut butter (but from like a health food store) and....I have dried corn cobs that I stick on a vertical stake near my other bird feeders. As the birds/squirrels begin to eat the corn, as the cob starts to be revealed, I will then "dip" the bare cob into the jar of peanut butter, coating all sides of the bare cob. Then holding the cob over a tray style bird feeder, I will sprinkle the now peanut-butter-covered-cob with millet seed. Naturally, the seed clings to the peanut butter, and any excess falls onto the tray feeder (so it doesn't go to waste). Then I carefully stick the cob back onto its vertical post. The peanut butter/millet gets eaten right up! :-)

Good idea...thanks!!

My oak trees have rough bark, I just smear it on the bark.

I have spread it on the bark and in the knotholes.

me too, where my squirrels promptly eat it all.

We use Jiff, too. At first I put out extra crunchy but the birds didn't seem to take to that. Then I loaded up the feeder (a two-sided store-bought one with a push-through perch and grate to hold the pb) with the creamy variety and they gobble that up amazingly fast. The only ones to feed on it are the warblers and Chipping Sparrows, though.

I would be happy with warblers eating it at my house!! Trying to picture what type of feeder that is tho!

Nanny, will take a snapshot tomorrow and post it for you. Gotta go start supper now. :-P

I put out the pb and j leftovers that my kids don't finish and the squirrels usually get to it first.

Nanny, here are a couple of pix of the feeder I was telling you about. It is a handy little thing... maybe 6" high by 3" wide. I tried filling it all the way to the top with pb, but what was higher up just got old and crusty. Down low they manage to gobble it down to the grid in a couple of days.

.... and filled

Oh I've seen those; very nice! I would have to put mine on the baffled pole.

Oh, I like that!! I have just seen flat ones without a perch. But the perches make it useable by more birds. Will have to look around.

Thank you so much for posting!