Fire ants nest in chicken cage..

[MCI]

I've never seen a colony that large except when I spread one out doing some landscaping, but they built a new centralized colony within a week. Is it possible the ants are foraging over the entire pen? When foraging they will sometimes excavate to some extent near a food source like spilled feed or grain. The boiling water is only effective on the main colony. It won't kill it but they will usually move on a few or few hundred feet and do it all over again. How wet is the area around the chicken pen? If the ground is saturated and assuming your pen is elevated then they don't have anywhere else to go and you may hve to use some form of insecticide to rid your pen of them.

They don't seem to bother the chickens too bad except for the chicks and hens on a nest. If I have a broken egg in a nest box I change the bedding and clean it out the best I can. I try to limit spilled feed in the pen. I use diatomaceous earth in the covered portion of my pen, and elsewhere during dry weather, when I have trouble with ants or any other insects. It doesn't kill them all outright but does seem to work given a little time.

 

[maggiec1951]

My dad raised fowl of some sort all my life, the last being guineas before he passed away. Living in Louisiana, there were always fire ants. He would take a shovel full from one mound (colony) and put it in another colony and continue introducing "foreign" ants into each colony and they would eventually kill each other off. No pesticides, no chemicals, just turn the territorial little buggers on each other. It always worked and sometimes we would go for months with no fire ants.

 

[fishman65]

I put diatamous earth all over the mound and problem solved....non toxic and after it kills the ants the chickens can dust bathe in it....i get it at my feed store for $2.00 a lb.

 

[NateinFL]

Quote:
Really? I tried the exact same thing with mine, good food-grade type, did not work whatsoever. Tried it several times.

 

[Bear Foot Farm]

Although because chickens constantly peck the dirt I assume they will be killed if I use it inside the coop?

Put a cardboard box upside down over the mound, or use some wire to fence off the area​

 

[erinszoo]

We've used Malt-o-meal cereal dry to get rid of fire ants. Apparantly they eat it and it mixes with juices inside of them and they "blow up".

Whatever or however it works, it worked great for us. It took about a week to kill off the whole colony though ... but it wasn't as big as yours. And it is completely non toxic to everything else - people, kids, chickens, cats, whatever ...

 

[Duramaxgirl]

Quote:
Oooh I'd love to see ants blow up!

horrid little things.

 

[Bear Foot Farm]

Apparantly they eat it and it mixes with juices inside of them and they "blow up".

That's not true at all.
Most ants can't even swallow solid materials​

 

[erinszoo]

Quote:
That's not true at all.
Most ants can't even swallow solid materials

Great! We have an ant expert here. So tell us what will work to kill them and why does Cream of Wheat and Malt o Meal work to get rid of ant colonies? How do they eat sugar and other crumbs that we've seen them carrying into their holes? And why do they bite us if they can't eat solid things?

 

[Bear Foot Farm]

Great! We have an ant expert here

So tell us what will work to kill them and why does Cream of Wheat and Malt o Meal work to get rid of ant colonies? How do they eat sugar and other crumbs that we've seen them carrying into their holes? And why do they bite us if they can't eat solid things?

I'm no "expert" but I do know some facts about ants

Borax, Boric Acid, and lots of other poisons will kill them

Cream of Wheat and Malt O Meal doesn't kill them, since it's nothing but grain
What most likely happened is you disturbed them, so the just moved to a new location

They can eat sugar because it can dissolve into a liqud they can swallow

The food you see them carrying back to the nest is fed to the larvae, who regurgitate a liquid the adult ants can swallow.

They BITE you as a means of defense.

They can't swallow you.

This topic has been done before:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=6693466

Ants can't swallow large particles, and many can't swallow solids at all.

The food is fed to the larvae, and they regurgitate a liquid that is fed to the Queen.

Other ants partially digest the food in their bodies and regurgitate to feed others.

In neither case do they "explode"

http://www.angelfire.com/hi/redant/insideoutside.html

The digestive system - this part of an ant is used for digesting an ants food. When food is eaten,it passes on to the food pouch.This is where the juices are sqeezed out of the food.

The ant swallows the juice and spits out the solid part.The liquid goes to the crop,or social stomach.

An ant will regurgitate (spit out) from its crop to feed other ants.Some food goes to the midgut,where its digested.The undigested food passes out of the rectum.

http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5164970_do-ants-digest-food.html

Adult ants cannot digest solid foods.

Therefore, everything they eat has to be turned into a liquid before it enters the digestive tract. When the ant eats a piece of food, digestive juices interact with the solid outside of the ant's mouth and dissolve the solid food into digestible liquid. The ant then laps up the food with its tongue.

Filtering
The food goes through the ant's mouth into a chamber below that houses a filter. The filter makes sure no solids are allowed to progress. The solids in the chamber are compressed into one pellet, which the ant then spits out.

http://msucares.com/insects/fireants/biology.html

Despite their helpless condition, the larvae make an important contribution to the welfare of the colony—older larvae are the only individuals in the colony capable of digesting solid food.

Workers bring all solid food particles to the older larvae, and, after this solid food is digested by the larvae, the resulting liquid is distributed to all members of the colony. Unlike honeybee colonies, fire ant colonies do not contain any physical structures for storing food. Food is stored inside the ants themselves, especially in the crops of larger workers.

Adult fire ants are not capable of eating solid foods; they have a sieve-like structure in their throat that prevents them from swallowing solids.

Solid food particles are carried back to the colony and fed to the older larvae, which are capable of converting them to liquids. The larvae then regurgitate this liquid food to the tending workers who pass it to other workers, as well to the queen and younger larvae. This process is known as trophalyxis, and it is also common in other social insects, like termites and honeybees. This habit of sharing food among all members of the colony is the main reason baits are such an effective way to control fire ants

Anything else you'd like to know about ants?​