The time has come again when we need to remember the birds in the gardens and perhaps also in the forests and please them with a little extra nutrition. Birds love seed balls or other hanging treats based on fat, seeds, grains and dried fruit. And we love the pleasant sight of a flying friend enjoying the goodies and the warm feeling of belonging to nature.
Today we can buy seed balls, often unfortunately in a plastic net, in almost every supermarket. But we enjoy making them at home. Working with fat and seeds is colourful, fun and fragrant and provides a meaningful play activity for young and old children and adults. Especially when the production is complemented by a joint walk in nature with the aim of hanging food on trees and talking about the forest, animals and helping each other. The creation of seed goodies can then be a program of several days. :)
Especially if you are a person who prefers products of plant origin, you will certainly appreciate our vegan version of seed nutrition for animals.
You certainly know the classic bird balls made from tallow - animal fat. But we were looking for a plant-based alternative. And they found it! Tallow is an excellent substitute for coconut fat. It is excellent to work with, it works great and, according to experts, it is completely safe and very beneficial for birds.
As a mold, a mold for making candles works best, thanks to the hole for the wick, but you can also make it with a sparkling wine mold or with other silicone molds. If you don't have either, you can certainly come up with another way - we also tried a plastic cookie wrapper, which at least got another use before being thrown into the yellow container.
Prepare bowls, natural strings and molds. Let's mix it up!
What does it take?
- Coconut fat (or tallow)
- Peanut butter (crunchy)
- Oatmeal and other cereals
- A mixture of seeds and grains = shelled and unshelled sunflower, pumpkin, millet, bran, buckwheat, groats, etc.
- Mixture of nuts: walnuts, almonds, cashews
- Dried fruit: pitted dates, raisins, etc. (rather less than more)
- Mold for candles (Blue mold for a candle, ball or Plastic mold for a candle, egg), mold for sparkling wine (Mold for sparkling wine, plastic or Stainless steel mold for sparkling wine or Silicone mold, donut)
How to do it?
Melt the fat and peanut butter (if using) in a saucepan over low heat and mix in the rest of the dry ingredients. A ratio of 1.5 parts of fat to 2 parts of loose mixture has worked well for us. Mix and wait a while for the dry ingredients to absorb some of the liquid fat and everything comes together nicely and starts to "stick".
In the meantime, prepare the forms into which you thread the strings through the wick hole (when using candle forms), or just prepare the strings (when using other forms).
Fill both halves of the mold (for candles and for sparkling wine) with the adhesive mixture and then connect the halves together. If you selected a mold of other shapes, fill the entire mold. It's up to you whether you want to anchor the string inside or wrap the finished pieces with the string.
Let the mixture harden in the molds in the cold - in the freezer, in the refrigerator or simply outside the window in cold weather.
When the mixture is hard, remove or peel the finished seed treats from the molds, if necessary, tie with string and hang from the trees.
May you enjoy everything related to production!
