Hey, everyone do y’all have any recommendations on a healthy birdseed to feed birds during the winter months? Maybe a not so expensive brand.
Black oil sunflower seed is what I tell all my friends to buy. It’s a high-fat, healthy choice to keep birds warm and fed in the winter. I’m lucky because a farmer who lives nearby sells huge bags for only twelve dollars, but it looks like Tractor Supply has a 40 lb bag for about 20 dollars.
Don’t buy from pet supply stores like Chewy or PetSmart though, they overprice their wild bird section.
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Black oil sunflower - keep it simple. I have tried many different brands, and most seed mixes have a bunch of milo (sorghum) which the birds don’t eat, which then rots on the ground. Waste of money. I would like to warn against a specific brand, Royal Wing. All their seed mixes and feeders that I have tried are, simply put, garbage. They broke or rotted within a month.
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Thanks for sharing! I will look into it.
Thanks!
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Have you tried this one from Royal Wing? https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/royal-wing-black-oil-sunflower-wild-bird-food-40-lb
I didn’t know that, I did recommend a Royal Wing seed because of the price, but I’ve never used it myself.
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No, but probably the clean black-oil sunflower from them is fine. I am just prejudiced against them because of the many broken feeders and rotten seeds.
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Okay thanks!
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I don’t like the mess of the black sunflower seeds. I use a mid price mix as the birds go through a lot. The millet seeds get eaten, as there’s not any mess left after snowmelt.
I think it should depend on who you feed and what feeder type you use. I don’t have specific bird to food recommendations,
I do hang suet feeders. I use the suet and fat off our meat.
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Thanks for the info!
Longer term, you can plant actual sunflowers and let them birds eat them or other perennial native species that provide seeds and berries. Better habitat, cheaper in the long run, etc.
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Yes you are right! I planted sunflowers in my garden during the summer. The American Goldfinch loved them.
Or tickseed sunflowers.
In the winter I stick with black oil sunflower seed, my grocery store has 40lb bags which are great, I don’t think brand matters much and it gets expensive so I’d recommend going for bargains over brand with birdseed. And as others have mentioned it does depend on your target birds and local species. In the spring I run some feeders with millet based feed since the buntings sometimes go for that but ignore sunflower seeds and mixing it up gives you more opportunities.
Also, besides birdseed, remember that all birds have to drink, even the ones that don’t eat seeds. If you set up a water drip you can get interesting birds visiting that will have nothing to do your feeders.
I also have a suet feeder and I run hummingbird feeders some of the year.
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Nice! Thanks for sharing! I think I will go with the Black oil sunflower seeds.
The best bang for the buck is Member’s Mark Supreme Blend that you can get at Sam’s Club. I have been using it for years. Far better than anything else in its price range.
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Nice! Thanks for the feedback 
.
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We have a winner! (sort of.)
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In my neck of the woods, we have Fleet Farms (akin to Tractor Supply). We buy in bulk and keep the seed in metal cans with metal lids and bails that lock the lids to the can. If you buy in bulk, you must get that seed into something that the mammals can’t get into: squirrels, mice, rats, raccoons, etc. We don’t get deer or bear so no worries on that account.
We feed black-oil sunflower seed and peanuts in the shell year around. The Blue Jays love our peanuts but it also brings in Hairy Woodpeckers and Red-bellied Woodpeckers. Other birds might have a go at them but the size of the shell needs a bill that can pick it up and open it.
In the winter, I like to get a good quality suet cake for woodpeckers and nuthatches. We have an upside down feeder to try to keep the house sparrows off the suet. Suet is not good for summer but we have occasionally switched to whole nut mixes in the summer for woodpeckers. But, those are expensive and the woodpeckers will come for the sunflower seeds. There are cheap suet cakes that I don’t think are worth it. Look at the ingredients. The one we have now is almost all peanut butter, suet, and other nuts.
I will concur that cheap mixes are a waste of time and that’s pretty much all that any big box hardware or grocery store carries. Even Fleet Farm will carry the ‘cheap’ mixes because they come in smaller bags.
We tried striped sunflower seeds once in a attempt to keep the sparrows from eating so much of it since they can’t easily break through the thicker shell. But the black-oil hulls kind of naturally degrade and the striped hulls didn’t. I don’t recommend those for a backyard.
I have heard that safflower seed is attractive to cardinals but not so much to house sparrows. I can’t remember if we actually tried them but they’re more expensive and I bet the sparrows would still eat them. They will really eat anything we put out except those peanuts in the shell.
My neighbors asked my advice about what different kind of seed to offer (they’re offering hulled sunflower seeds). What I told them is, instead of a different seed that goes into the same feeder, to think of how different types of feeders can service different types of birds. And I think the 2nd thing to add to a backyard is a bird bath instead of a different feeder. We get lots of birds at our birdbath that rarely go to the feeder. Of course, in winters (that get cold), it must be heated and it must be plugged in. So that might not be something you can do easily. And I don’t think they’re cheap. But next summer… give it a thought. We keep a large ceramic saucer meant for a large potted plant on the ground with water in it as well as a standing plastic birdbath.
But just keep in mind whether at, some point, you might want an additional item: suet feeder, finch-seed feeder, feeders that hold fruit or meal worms, feeder for larger birds (small perches aren’t great for larger birds), or a bird bath.
Feeding birds isn’t really cheap. But remember they aren’t relying on your food exclusively and you can feed smaller amounts on a regular basis rather than going ‘cheap’ feed.