Commercially made suet cakes and hanging wire suet feeders make it easy and fast to start offering high-fat food. Cakes come in gourmet as well as simple fare and may contain apples, raisins, pecans, peanuts, insects and other goodies. Many are labeled for year-round feeding and hold up through the warm weather. If the weather stays cold, drippings from bacon or roasts may be partially cooled and painted into tree crevices or peanut butter feeders. More durable are cakes homemade from beef suet.
Butchers carve the best, most firm suet from the vicinity of beef kidneys.
If you don't find it for sale and have to request it, ask that it be ground like hamburger for easier handling. To make suet cakes, place ground suet in a double boiler, heat until liquid, add fresh fat rendered from a roast if desired, and then cool. Reheating and cooling a second time produces a harder cake that stands up better in warm weather. As it gets firm, the mixture may be spread on tree trunks with crevices or small holes, but squirrels may find it before the birds do. Instead, pour the still-warm glop into muffin tins, tuna or juice cans or use a pie or cake pan and then cut the disk into pieces.