Fire Ants for breakfast lunch and dinner

[Chick Charm]

For the past few weeks my flock of 13 chickens have decided to eradicate all the fire ants on the property. Yeah! Seems they have have developed a penchant for the taste of these tiny little pests. I am surprised at their voraciousness. I can see that they are getting burned by the ants because they peck them off their legs while doing the "ouchy dance". I never knew they would like them so much. But I am sure glad.

In the desert my chickens always left the fire ants alone. Those ants were much larger for sure though. Anyone else have fire ant eating chickens? Or is this unique to the southeast?

 

[chfite]

Interesting what they will and won't eat.

Chris

 

[Austinorpington]

Interesting. I never knew chickens ate ants. Makes sence they are bugs. Don't they sting on the way down?

 

[Angelight]

Wish mine would find them! Freaking fire ants took over my raised bed. Tried the honey and jelly mixed with borax. They laughed at it. Tried coffee and cinnamon. Again, they laughed. I spent a lot of money on the organic compost for that dang bed just to have to pour pesticides all over it? No, I don't think so. of course, I didn't do it for ants, either, so... There's that... GOT to figure out what to do.

 

[Joan71]

I am in SC. There is no controlling fire ants, no matter what one uses. I have been concerned about my chickens being in a coop/run area. There are to many hawks flying above to even think of letting the chicks out. Can't use fire ant poisons. I am afraid it would kill the chicks. So an ole timer told me to use Corn meal (the type that you cook, not the cooked ones). So I got a large bag of it and tore open the tops of the larger mounds, put a generous amount of the corn meal on the mound. What happens, is the workers take the corn meal pieces back to the mound for the queen. When the ants consume the corn meal, then drink water (and they do love water) the corn meal swells up in their bodies, killing the ant. This is the only eco-friendly way we have of keeping the mounds to a minimum, I spread corn meal around the outside of the chicken area. I have never been fire ant free. I hate them. I check my run and coop every day several times. I treat any place that I see ant activity.

I have also had the fire ants get in my raised beds, flower pots, any place dark and damp. The corn meal when sprinkled in the raised beds will make the ants leave the beds. Just use whatever amount of corn meal it takes to get them to leave. The corn meal is not real expensive and works better than poisons. We have dogs and cats so no poisons in the yard. Good luck. I hope this will help someone.

 

[leadfarmer]

I have used grits to control fireants aswell. They eat them and pop.

 

[heychickenlady]

I live in Florida where fire ants are a real problem. We are new to this whole chicken adventure with four beautiful New Hampshire Reds.
We will try the corn meal trick as our yard is organic and my husband put the adorable coop he built right on top of a red ant mound.
Thanks so much for the information.

 

[Joan71]

I made a misstatement on my prior reply. It is grits that I use not corn meal. Although the corn meal does work too. I was so worried about the fire ants because we are just plagued with them. Well, to my surprise, my chicks, now hens, love them, they keep them cleaned out of their run and play area. When they are foraging, they will go for the ant hills and really get a great snack.

 

[lazy gardener]

We have no fire ants here, but my girls have cleaned out every nest in their yard. They now have some nice little dust bath bowls where the ants used to reside. My hubby who is not at all enamored with the idea of having poultry, has been asking me about moving their run over to the north side of the house where the ants are plentiful. He's happy to trade ant nests for bird poo!!!

 

[OldGuy43]

I've been using Ortho Bug-B-Gone Max on the whole yard, with the exception of the chicken/duck run for several years now and have had no further problems with fire ants. I started using it to deal with fleas, but it's worked well for the fire ants that used to be a problem.