Pepper Suet - Hot Pepper to Squirrel Proof a Suet Feeder

Suet bird feeders are a great way to feed your backyard birds in the winter time. The energy supplied by bird suet is just what the birds need in the winter time, as their normal sources of food are often either gone for the winter (like berries) or hunkered down for the winter (for example insects.) Bird suet is rendered from the fat of animals and so has a lot of energy content.

But the fact that it’s such a great source of energy makes it attractive to other wintering creatures, like squirrels and rodents. These are usually not welcome guests at the bird feeder, so we try to discourage them from the feeder. While there are all sorts of different squirrel proof feeders to be found, one simple way to discourage them is with pepper suet. So why would pepper suet be effective and not repel the birds?

Nature has provided a simple solution for getting mammals like squirrels and rodents to steer clear of the bird feeder. Peppers have evolved over many years to have high level of capsaicin, which is responsible for the heat in peppers. They can have different levels of capsaicin, which controls how hot they seem to us (this is measured in Scovill units). This apparently happened to keep the mammal from consuming the peppers, as they would not do a great job of dispersing the seeds. However, birds do a much better job, and so the capsaicin content that resulted has no effect on birds. They can eat pepper with virtually no effect.



While this is good for the peppers, we can put it to great use in our suet feeders, by simply mixing an appropriate amount of pepper in with the suet cakes. This results in a great food for the birds, but one that the squirrels and rodents are repelled by. So you don’t have to battle them with caged bird feeders, squirrel baffles, but you can use a simple suet feeder and stock it with pepper bird suet. Give it a try, and see how well it works for you.