Quail. Aviaries and fire ants.

[dpenning]

I've read that fire ants are a big problem for quail, almost drawn to them. How do you folks that raise quail on the ground deal with them?

 

[JRNash]

Was talking about this a little while back with Fat Daddy. Fire ants played a large role in the disappearance of the Bobs around here. I no longer have to worry about fire ants here. Invasive purple crazy ants ran them off. (Worse than the FA's)

 

[JRNash]

Maybe diatoms?

 

[dpenning]

Maybe diatoms?

Definitely in their hutch. I'm thinking about putting down a granular fire ant killer around but not in the are where I hope to build their pen. I still have several weeks as they are just a week old tomorrow.

I'll have to look into these purple ants... they bite like fire ants? The fireants are awful up here.

 

[dpenning]

Good grief, I just googled your crazy ants... you can keep them down there, PLEASE!

 

[JRNash]

No they don't bite. They over run EVERYTHING. ID much rather have the fire ants back. Normal poison doesn't work

 

[JRNash]

Lol. Yea,invasive is putting it mildly. The ground looks like its moving. The poison that does work is very expensive and doesn't work for long.

 

[Binki]

I would suggest diatomaceous earth - they don't die instantly but it is a deterrent at least for ants here, they won't cross a line of it.

But maybe there's a more permanent way of controlling them by mixing borax with what they feed on? Apparently they bring it back to the queen, but different ants eat different things. :O

 

[JRNash]

Crazy ants are a type of carpenter ant. They will not eat baits. Don't know what they do eat???

 

[Binki]

Crazy ants are a type of carpenter ant. They will not eat baits. Don't know what they do eat???

Hmmmm if they are a type of carpenter ant, it's possible what's suggested here could work on them,

http://pestkilled.com/how-to-get-rid-of-carpenter-ants/

There's a Natural Treatment section that discusses borax and sugar water as well as DE, funny we have big black ants in our kitchen this spring and just did the borax sugar mix a few hours ago and all of a sudden there's like 7 at one spot, all feasting on it... Says might take up to a couple of weeks but at this rate it seems our problem will be solved sooner?

I'll try and remember to take a picture next time I'm in the kitchen it's good to know that carpenter ants don't actually eat wood but burrow through damp wood. We've seen some come under our kitchen door (leads to the backyard) and when we put a line of DE there they learned to climb the walls to get around it xD!!

We were going to make a hopefully invisible paste of DE to paint over where we think they could be coming in but here's hoping the borax mixture works. My chickens don't like ants and my quail don't have access to them.