If you’d like to make homemade bird food, you’ll find it’s an easy and fun project, especially for families with kids. Your neighborhood birds will love you for feeding them, especially in the harsh winter months when food is scarce.

If you have pet birds, you’ll want to buy pellet food for their primary food source. Seeds, nuts and fresh fruit and vegetables should be fed to pet birds as supplements, not as primary foods. Pellet food is loaded with vitamins and low in fat. An all-seed diet is very unhealthy for pet birds.

Wild birds need the fat present in the bird food recipes listed below, especially in the winter months. When making homemade bird food in the late winter or early spring for wild birds, you may want to add in a crushed eggshell from one egg in order to add calcium to the diet of the birds. Female wild birds need the extra calcium when they are gestating eggs.  

Homemade Bird Food Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 pound suet
• 2 cups oats
• 1 cup sunflower seeds
• 1 cup thistle seed
• ½ cup crushed nuts

Bring suet to room temperature. Mix all ingredients together and place in suet holder. Hang in back yard on a branch, away from the house. Store excess in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Homemade Organic Bird Food Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 cup organic peanut butter
• 1 cup organic seed mix
• 1 cup organic oats
• 6 large pine cones
• String, twine or ribbon

Tie a length of string, twine or ribbon around each pine cone, leaving a loop for hanging. Mix ingredients together, then press into pine cones. Hang pinecones from trees.

Homemade Parrot Treat Recipe

Ingredients:

• ½ cup peanut butter
• 1 cup oats
• ½ cup crushed nuts or seeds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine ingredients, then spread on a greased baking sheet in a thin layer. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until ingredients have baked completely. Let cool. Serve no more than a tablespoon-sized chunk each day as a treat. This should not be a primary food for your parrot, but it is a fine treat.