fire ants

[seminolewind]

The fire ants are eating me alive! I sit and watch my chickens and the next thing is that they are all over my feet, ankles, pants. What can I do?

 

[countryboy]

i poured 5 gallons of hot tap water on some mounds and they came up and died because of the cold weather. i checked the next mourning and there was a brownish black crust on top of the mound, it was dead ants, 100s


forgot to put i did this in the evening, good luck!

 

[Cabe]

No chance of freezing ants in florida. I have the same problem if you find a solution let me know, to bad the chickens don't eat them.

 

[countryboy]

didn't think about it not getting cold enough in florida.
one thing i was told about but haven't tried yet is taking a 5 gallon bucket and cutting a hole in it and attaching a flex tube to the exhaust of your lawn mower or what ever and the bucket, place the bucket over the mound and let the motor idle for 5 minutes, supposed to fume them to death.

 

[Parson's Wife]

We have fire ant.. I was told Diesel fuel...course that won't work with chickens roaming...
wish someone had a miracle cure...they love our sidewalks

 

[halo]

I have found the best thing is Amdro. It really really works. You'll just have to keep it away from chickies; Im sure it would harm them. And you have to be diligent with the Amdro and use it as directed. But it really does work. I have hardly any in my yard anymore.

 

[gila_dog]

Don't know about fire ants, but we do have red harvester ants (aka red ants) here. They aren't as horrible as fire ants but they do make big dirt piles surrounded by a 10' diameter dead zone. They will launch banzai-style suicide attacks against you if you mess with them. And they sting like crazy if they get on you.

I caution against using poison on them tho, and this may go for fire ants too. When I was a kid my Mom accidentally poisoned a couple of our chickens with ant poison. She sprinkled some on an anthill and it wiped them out pretty good, but within the following week we lost 2 hens, just keeled over dead. One day I noticed a hen pecking around the ant hill we had poisoned, and within the hour she died a horrible death too. Then it hit me. The chickens were pecking up grit and sand around that anthill and picking up the poison. I don't know how long the stuff was lethal to chickens, and wild birds too. Maybe the ant poison they have now is less dangerous, I don't know.

Anyway, I thought up a better way to annihilate red ants that was only dangerous to the ants, and as it turned out, to me. I took a peice of flagstone about 3' in diameter and dropped it on an ant hill. I left it there for a few days to let them build their tunnels all under ther rock. Then I came back with a basketball and started dribbling it on the rock. Man! The ants came swarming out of their tunnels below the rock up to where the basketball was pounding up down. They were smashed into a slimy grease by the thousands until they just ran out of ants.

I haven't tried that method lately. I found that while I was dribbling the ball several clever ant commandos crawled way up inside my pants legs to where the sun don't shine, and set me on fire!

 

[seminolewind]

Quote:
Boiling water might work even if it doesn't freeze. The exhaust fumes seems like a good idea too.

 

[Wildsky]

DE - does work, but it takes some time....

We have field ants around - and a HUGE mound in the acre next to our house, we actually DUG it up a bit when we had snow - in the HOPE that it would make them MOVE or kill them..... I think they secretly have another home....

I sprinkled DE around in the fall.... it did make them change their regular route... but didn't kill off the whole MOUND.

I did on accident trap some of them in a plastic bucket, they couldn't climb out so I sprinkled DE to see what would happen - they died by the next day.

 

[cindydj]

I hate fire ants!!!! My chickens will sctratch the mound down and eat them....Try pouring orange oil diluted on the mound.