ants in the incubator!!!! HEED HELP REALLY FAST!!!!!!!

[Eggs4Sale]

Holy COW, what a disaster that was in the making! I felt SURE those ants were already eating baby chicks.... I'm so glad you saved them!!

You can also keep them out by putting down an unbroken line of dish soap.

 

[FenDruadin]

If you want to destroy the colony of ants altogether, it is simply enough done. Get a tin of boric acid from the local pharmacy (you'll probably have to ask for it, and the pharmacist won't know what you mean, and you'll ask someone else and they'll show you the 20 Mule Team Borax and you'll say, "No, it's in a pharmacy tin like pills come in, but it's a loose powder," and they'll shrug and hand you off to someone else who will finally know what you are talking about and hand you a pill jar with "boric acid" written on it and a skull and crossbones to show you that it's dangerous, but only if you eat it--so don't). Heat some water on the stove. Make up a mix of 1 part hot water, 1 part sugar, 1 part boric acid, and probably a few drops of food color so you can see where it is if it spills. Once it cools, feed it to the ants. They will eat some and take the rest back to their nest to feed the babies and the queen. It kills slowly so that they have time to spread it around and it kills the entire colony instead of just the ants you can see.

To feed it, you can either just spread it in their path (preferably on a piece of cardboard or something so it doesn't get your surfaces dirty), or you can make little containers with tiny openings for the ants to go in through (this method prevents pets from eating it). You DO want to be careful not to let pets or children eat it, as it will taste sweet to them and it will make them very very ill.

You will need to leave it in their path for at least three days. This is the hard part--don't kill the ants as they go in and out of the container (or as they are feeding on & collecting the bait). You want them to live long enough to take it back to their queen and larvae. It will be very hard to watch them feeding and enjoying themselves--and they will do so, in droves--and not do anything about it. But your patience will pay off.

Anyway, I do sympathize with your problem. We get ants in our house on occasion, large scout ants looking for yummies. I once left half a watermelon out on the counter by accident overnight, and when I got up in the middle of the night, it was completely black from the ants that were feeding. They were the big carpenter-type ants, and they scurried in a million directions when I turned on the lights. It gave me the heebie-jeebies. And of course, I couldn't get rid of them after that, short of killing them all, because they knew where the good stuff was. So I had to destroy their entire colony (per the instructions I just gave you). It actually makes me sad to do that, because ants are a valuable part of our ecosystem, and I hate thinking of the slow and painful death they suffer, but I also cannot cohabitate with an entire colony of large scavenging creepy crawlies. So they had to go.

Hope that helps. Glad your incubator is clean for now. Do keep it carefully guarded, as the ants back at home know where it is now, and they will continue to try to get to it.

Good luck with your hatch!

Heather

 

[tmpshrty96]

there not rocking any more but i think there just asleep. cuz its 12:35 in the AM.

 

[Eggs4Sale]

Quote:

 

[Eggs4Sale]

Quote:
I have a question.

If I put this concoction in my storeroom near the bag of dog food, everything will be fine because no animals go in there, except me and the ants.
But if the ants LEAVE the storeroom and go back outside, which they do, will they become little packets of poison to chickens or lizards or whatever eats ants?
To be honest, I haven't seen ANY of my critters eating ants, but if they taste all yummy loaded up with this stuff, maybe the chickens will finally try to earn their keep.

 

[Cheep a'lil Talk a'lil]

Quote:
I whole heartedly agree with you on that. And what I tell my kids is, if its outside leave it alone, but if its in the house then out it goes or kill it. I don't go into the bugs homes so I don't want them in mind!

I hope all goes well with your babies tmpshrty96!

 

[FenDruadin]

Cheep a'lil--I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who feels for ants.

Eggs4Sale--I don't know for SURE the answer, but I suspect the danger is minimal. Despite the skull & crossbones, boric acid is actually less toxic than most anything else used to kill bugs. In the kind of tiny doses a larger animal would get from an ant or two, I doubt it would have any effect at all. Also, it probably *won't* make ants any tastier to bug-eating critters. I have noticed my animals don't like to eat ants, and I suspect it's because ants bite back, so it's just not a pleasant experience.

The main danger is if they should sit down and actually eat a bunch of it in one sitting. I store mine in a high cupboard in a jar that I label "POISON," and I make sure I clean up any drips (hence the food color--my first batch had no food color, and I remember having to wipe down the whole kitchen looking for invisible drips, lol) to prevent dogs et al licking it up. My cat actually did lick a drip once, and nothing horrible happened to him, but no sense in taking chances.

The storeroom seems like a perfect place to "serve it up" to the ants. It will take care of any colonies that are currently invading your feed stores, which will be a really good thing.

Good luck!

Heather

 

[Riven]

There was obviously something in the incubator that was attracting them. This could be prevented by making sure your inubator and area around it is clean of bad eggs and shells.

Ants only come if there is something to eat. Usually they send out one ant that is called a scout to find food or water, if it finds it then it will go back and more will come to help carry home more food.

Bugs are a part of our world, if we get ants in the house, which is very rare it's because our counters aren't wiped up. If your food stuffs are in containers ( which they should be in anyway to keep them fresh, whether it's pet food or people food ) and everything is clean you should not have ants.

 

[FenDruadin]

Riven--I agree with you for the most part, but depending on where you live it can be much harder to keep the ants out. We get them at the Meetinghouse where we attend worship, and that place is kept super clean. The food is all very tightly contained, sugar is kept in the fridge, floors are swept and counters cleaned--I mean, it's virtual lockdown. And we STILL get them there. Likewise, at our house, the frequent scouts in our house from time to time find something and call in the troops, and then it's warfare, and it doesn't seem to matter how clean I think the house is--they find a crumb that's fallen behind the oven, or food left in the sink trap overnight, or whatever. I think one factor is woods--we live, and the Meetinghouse is located in, woods. But that's just a guess toward the cause.

However, I do think it would be a good idea to evaluate sanitation practices and see if there's anything that could be improved. I know my house is never as clean as I would like it to be. In fact, sometimes it's downright filthy, although I do have to be careful about foodstuffs regardless of how careless I am about dust and clutter.

Also, it occurs to me that you might want to check for rotten eggs if you haven't already. If something is rotting, even a little seepage would attract the ants.

 

[tmpshrty96]

i have three little eggs hatching now 1 of them pipped this morning before i woke up ande i havent seen it move since. so i thought it might be dead so i picked it up and i felt it move inside so i set it back down but it still hasnt rocked or made the hole larger. should i help? i dont want these babys to die because my hen that laid them died a couple days later. we dont kno how though