Fire Ants

tntpeeps

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I am EXTREMELY new to Chick'n rais'n and have a question before i buy....
we live in south texas where there are ALOT of fire ants, and i want to know if it is ok to use fire ant granules (poison) where the peeps are going to be???? someone told me not to use it, and that the cks will eat all the ants anyway....I already have the coop and feed, feeders, etc.....just waiting on the pullet arrival.....but dont want to contaminate the yard w/the granules if it is a danger to new arrivals.....
thanks!!!
 
i would not used it around any kind of pountry they will eat when they are adult just flood the area where u want to keep them.
my thought is any thing that chicken will be in contract with i would i eat it too. i get enough poison in other ways in my life.
 
If you are thinking of using those Mirex granuales I wouldn't. The poison is soaked into ground up corn cobs.

Ants can be a real pain. Here in Arizona, we have those little black ants that get into everything. Some years are worse than others, it all depends upon when and if we get rains.

However, we discovered that they do not like to crawl on black rubber. I don't know why, but they don't. We put all of our feeders up on old cut up inner tubes and tires.

Try it and see if it works with fire ants.

Rufus
 
thanks, for the input....i will use the black rubber aound the feeders and see if i can find an organic route to gettin rid of those pesky stingin rascals!!!!
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Think about getting a Guiney, that bird can wipe out the ant population in no time flat and will get along fine with your Peeps.

AL
 
tntpeeps I feel your pain. I to live in South TX and fire ants are the scurge of the area. One of my broodies lost all of her chicks to fire ants. They don't seem to bother the adults too much. Try getting some food grade DE to take care of the ants. It isn't harmful to the birds at all.
 
I don't know if this would work but it is an observation. We have goats as well and we used a rollotiller to till their pen before we got them. There are never any ants there or the other area we have tilled. I also have DE. I have sprinkled it on the ant hills and they relocate so I could chase them away if I kept after them. Although they are not in a horrible place now so I am leaving most of them. It was helpful for the pile right under the coop door. You could maybe throw down a good amount of DE while tilling it up too?

Hope that helps!
 
My problem with the grits (or corm meal) solution is the chickens eat the grits. However they will not touch that white powdery sprinkle-on poison that does not need to be watered in; one brand is Ortho. The ants do relocate but in much smaller numbers and you can eventually get them all. It helps to sprinkle the mound lightly then sprinkle a circle around the mound about 6" away; evidently this gets relocating ants.

I wish chickens WOULD eat fire ants. Mine won't touch them. I have also had the experience that they don't bother adults but will kill chicks. I think the yolk, etc. attracts them. I usually use DE very sparingly but use more in a broody nest.

DE works fairly well but not as well as Ortho.
 

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