The Fan Club: Woodpeckers, Parakeets and a Badger Named Ralph

Start with what goes right, because for most buyers plenty does. Fifty-six of the latest hundred reviews are five stars, and together they read like a garden wildlife census: blue tits, sparrows, robins, wood pigeons, jackdaws, visiting woodpeckers, even parakeets. One five-star reviewer, Dave G, needed just five words: "Ralph the badger likes them". Another, Louise, reports that squirrels "100% approve, entered house via cat flap to get to tub on side of counter".

The more practical five-star reviews are worth reading for feeding ideas too. Vocalistuk, very happy with the size and quality, writes: "I crush and mix a handful of these peanuts with equal amounts of dried fruit, mealworms, fat ball and fresh chopped apple for the local sparrows, robins and wood pigeons who scoff the lot". That kind of mix is a sensible way to stretch a tub through a cold snap, when birds need fat and protein most.

Consumption rates tell their own story. JoannaN gets through "at least three or four tubs of these per winter", and that matches the wider pattern: a busy feeding station in a UK winter will empty a 5 litre tub faster than you expect, especially once the local squirrels have clocked it.

The Tub Is Half the Appeal

Loose peanuts in a torn paper sack go soft in a British shed by November. The reusable 5 litre tub is the quiet selling point here, and reviewers keep mentioning it unprompted. Anna, who orders regularly for the local squirrels, calls the tub "very practical" and says it keeps the nuts dry. D.newman found them clean with no damp and says they store well. NC500, a four-star reviewer, puts it plainly: "Strong container so that is a definite plus".

On price, Gilly B, ordering a second tub for a garden that includes two visiting woodpeckers, reckons "the price of these beats all the high street shops". At £12.99, that rings true against garden centre prices for branded peanuts, though we will come back to the per-kilo maths later, because it is less generous than the big tub suggests.

One human note from the five-star pile: reviewer KLH points out that raw peanuts intended for the birds "make a great snack for humans too". We would gently suggest keeping the tub for the wildlife, but it does say something about the quality of a good batch.

The Mould Reports, and Why They Matter

Now the part you need to read before clicking buy. Twenty-five of the hundred most recent reviews are one star, and more than a dozen reviews describe the same fault: mouldy, discoloured or musty nuts. What makes these reports credible is who is writing them. Ted, a three-star reviewer who has "bought this tub of peanuts 30 times before", says the last four or five purchases were disappointing, and now picks through each tub: "I pick out the worse and give them the best of a bad bunch". Langley Humphreys, who had bought these 18 times previously, opened the latest tub to a "fusty smell" with nuts that were small, hard and discoloured. Sarah had been ordering for months before a bad tub arrived: "These bird nuts have just arrived and they are mouldy and not fit for any birds".

Mrs. Trellis adds a detail worth noting: her April 2025 tub carried an expiry date of 01/02/2027 yet arrived "mouldy and unusable". A long date on the lid is no guarantee of what is inside, so judge by eye and nose, not the label.

This is not a cosmetic issue. Mould on peanuts can produce aflatoxin, which is harmful to garden birds, so anything musty, green-tinged or shrivelled should go in the bin, not the feeder. Even Tigs, a loyal four-star buyer who orders "to support this small business", admits the nuts have arrived with mould several times. The pattern across the dates suggests batch inconsistency rather than a uniformly bad product: plenty of tubs ordered in the same months arrived fresh, and Fairman called them "the best bird-feed peanuts I have had. Good size, fresh smelling, no fragments or dust". But the odds of a dud tub are clearly higher now than the 4.6 lifetime average implies.

Eight Smashed Tubs: The Courier Lottery

The second complaint cluster has nothing to do with the peanuts. Eight of the last hundred reviews describe tubs arriving cracked, split or in pieces, with nuts loose in the delivery box or scattered across the doorstep. Maggie Price, who still gave four stars because her birds and squirrel "polish them off in no time", found "the top of the tub was badly cracked and quite a few of the nuts were rattling around in the box !!". Rembrandt was blunter: "Nuts are fine but not when they spill all over the floor because the flimsy plastic tub is broken". Mrs Eloise Wakeford, a longtime buyer with no previous issues, received a tub "split 1/4 of the tub missing!!" (sic).

The tub that reviewers praise for shed storage is, it seems, not always up to the journey. A 5 litre bucket of peanuts is heavy enough that a dropped parcel cracks plastic, and a couple of reviewers note the listing would not accept a return. The practical fix: open the outer box the day it lands, photograph any damage, and go through Amazon's refund route straight away rather than the returns page. Refunds do happen: one buyer whose peanuts had "gone off and green" reports being refunded.

Five Litres on the Label, Kilos in the Small Print

One more thing to know before you compare prices: 5 litres is a volume, not a weight. John, a one-star reviewer, flagged it directly: "the actual contents are only 1.9 kg, shown in small print on the lid". Aziz worked the maths on his order: "too expensive, only 3 kg, another word £4.33/KG" (sic). Those two figures differ because Amazon appears to pool reviews across the listing's tub sizes, so weights quoted by reviewers vary with the variant they bought; one buyer even reports ordering a 3 kilo tub and receiving less than 2 kilos. Check the weight on the listing for the exact size in your basket before judging value.

Either way, you pay a premium over bulk. Robin B found it "not such good value compared to by the sack" and went back to buying sack peanuts. It is a fair point: a 25kg sack works out far cheaper per kilo. The counterargument is everything a sack does not give you: a sealed, rodent-proof, damp-proof container, doorstep delivery, and a size that gets used up before it can stale. For a garden with one or two feeders, the tub format justifies the markup. For an allotment holder feeding half the county's jackdaws, price up the sacks.

Buy It, But Do the Day-One Check

So where does that leave the famous 4.6 stars? It reflects years of tubs landing fresh and being emptied by grateful wildlife, and most weeks that is still the experience: the majority of even the recent reviews are five stars from people whose birds, squirrels and one badger are eating well. But the slide to 3.6 across the last hundred reviews is real, driven by mouldy batches and courier damage, and the most loyal buyers are the ones sounding the alarm. On current form we would call this a 3.5 to 4 star product: a strong feeding staple with a quality-control wobble it needs to fix.

Our advice if you order: open the tub the day it arrives, look for discolouration and have a sniff. A fresh batch smells nutty and clean; a fusty or musty smell means stop and claim a refund immediately, while the window is open. Never put doubtful peanuts out for the birds. Store the tub with the lid on somewhere cool and dry, and through a UK winter expect a busy garden to empty it within a few weeks.

For £12.99, a good tub of these is one of the cheaper ways to keep a garden full of birds through the lean months, and the wildlife verdict in the reviews is about as unanimous as these things get. Just do the day-one check, and you will most likely join the 56% leaving five stars.