I made that mistake a few months ago - put a cardboard box full of fat balls on top of a box in the garage temporarily and forgot all about them for a few weeks - virtually all eaten.
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The vast majority of pre-packaged feeds I find in shops have finely chopped nuts and many of the suet balls have peanut flour or nuts too, so I do tend to scour the ingredient list. The ‘produced in a factory’ disclaimer is so widespread for so many human foodstuffs I often think it’s added even when extremely unlikely there’d be any contamination.
I’d not heard of the ‘no-grow’ mixes- they might be worth investigating.
Would agree that the seeds in many mixes just don’t get eaten - had a particularly fussy magpie the other day flicking all the bits he didn’t like/want off the bird table, made a right mess.
I find that most spilt seeds get hoovered up by pidgeons, crows and rodents. Ground feeding birds like blackbirds do get some of it, but I’d prefer not to attract the larger species which scare off, and sometimes attack the garden birds.
We gave up on the roamwild feeders….very expensive. If you follow their instructions, any feeder is Squirrel proof. We complained……squirrels were jumping from the tree and breaking the perches. We did get a replacement and told not to hang in a tree………we now have a cheap Lidl metal pole, suitably greased. No need for an expensive feeder, just £2.99 ones. And they now have modified their feeders………personally not a nice company to deal with, and i live just down the road.
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Snapshot taken just now. First day a blue tit has stayed inside to roost for this winter to come. Head tucked in the corner as always. Love these little things.
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I use seed feeders by a company called iborn that I found on amazon. I only use sunflower hearts year round.
They hang from a pole that has a bullet shaped baffle to stop the squirrels. It works well.
In the last year the rats have found us and can be seen in daylight brazenly grabbing the dropped seeds.
The dogs are NOT happy about this (and neither is the wife) , and I recently found the same iborn brand now sell a feeder with a tray underneath to catch dropped seeds. I’ve ordered a few and hopefully this will encourage them to look elsewhere.
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Thanks very much Gaza for the heads-up. I might make up a seed catcher for underneath the feeder that the squirrels are welcome to jump into and eat the fallen seed. At least the rats shouldn’t be able to get up there. That may do the trick.
If a squirrel can get there, I’m pretty sure a rat will manage it too. They are agile, and very persistent once they know there a big pile of food waiting for them.
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Yes, that could be the case. Squirrels appear to climb and jump more, but maybe rats do too.
A friend of mine here who’s originally from Manchester bought a 177 cal air rifle with a scope and shoots them in his yard. I find that to be a tad excessive and really couldn’t be bothered.
I have a feeling the rats are going to win in the end anyway. 
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Rats are certainly pretty resourceful and I’ve had them climb up a metal pole to reach a bird feeder. I may try one of those metal cones or similar you can put on the pole to stop them climbing it.
Chilli powder works quite well, mixed with food or sprinkled around the feeder or the ground below. Birds aren’t bothered by it, but rodents are.
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As I said in in my previous post, my ‘bullet’ cone works really well with squirrels as did a coating of vaseline on the pole (plus fun to watch)
For whatever reason we rarely see any rats, if and when I do, my quick fix is baking power mixed with peanut butter.
Baking powder produces internal gases which they cannot expel as they can’t burp.
That said I would not use baking powder if I had a neighbourhood wide problem, that needs a professional and neighbour collective approach.
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I’ve finally made the bird feeders squirrel proof and, touch wood, currently rat free (not sure I have much confidence that will stay the case for long).
The bigger issue I have is that the local sparrowhawk views our feeders as a buffet and nips in for lunch which he proceeds to eat on top of our pergola. Nature red in tooth and claw and all that. Impressive sight but decimating my tit population. Wish he’d take out some of the pigeons. I’m also a bit concerned that I am only seeing one of our 3 regular woodpeckers at the moment - hope he hasn’t had any of those.
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Our local sparrow hawk often leaves the remains of pigeons around the village, saw one on my shed roof a few months ago
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I am surprised that @Haim has not seen this thread.
He posts often on the birds thread.
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Saw this in today’s paper
How about all these peering over your fence just to gawp at your washing line
Lyndon
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We’ve fed the birds for many years with two “pole” feeder systems.
Several years ago the local rats found us, and started climbing up the poles. So I greased the poles, and the little beggers climbed up the nearby bushes and jumped across. Gotta admire them.
In the end the local cats got them. Even our old boy, Zebedee! I was walking him around the garden on his lead in his final year (he was sixteen at that time), and a juvenile rat wandered out in front of his nose…. I’d never see the old buqqer move so fast! Sadly, I couldn’t save the rodent.
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Yes cats are geniuses at getting their parents to do everything for them. I imagine your relationship with Zebedee was like this;
Sorry, don’t understand the reference.
It looks like a comedy or something out of the ultra realistic and gritty TV series Midsomer Murders