I was out mowing today and came across two large mounds that I suspected were fire ant mounds. I took a photo and emailed it to the county extension agent’s office. They emailed back with instructions on how to eliminate them. Has anyone else had to deal with fire ants? Thankfully the mounds are not in the horse pasture, but there may be more mounds I haven’t found yet. Info and insight greatly appreciated. Thanks!
What did your extension people tell you? I mowed today and my pastures are eaten up with fire ant mounds. We had no winter this year.
I don’t think anything eliminates them. They NEVER go away. Sometimes they go deeper. Sometimes they move. Always they reappear.
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yes on the never eliminated… may not even to be able to control them much … you can do defensive measures mainly protect all electrical devices (water pumps/air conditioners) as these suckers will attack the electrical connections to the point of destruction… even eat the insulation off wiring
Fire Ant Bait is about the only thing that will work as you must kill the evil queen (no this is not a video game)
A pest control person once told me that, unless one can dig down fast enough to kill the queen, the ant move to another spot.
evidently there are ants whose job is to quart the queen. If they sense danger they immediately move her and start a new mound.
We also only had a handful of days at or below freezing. There are anthills every place:(. I drop the mower deck, ow them down then drive back and forth over the dirt a few times to pack it down. I know they will start a new mound bit, if they are determined to undermine my yards and pastures, I’ll keep wrecking their ant hills as I come across them.
one of my horses rolled on an ant hill a few years back. That was a messy/itchy/skin peeling sight for a week or so:(
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The Ag Extension person said to drench the mounds with insecticide, but from what I’ve read, it’s very difficult to get the queen, and the mound is very deep. That’s one reason I was looking for info on what others have done. I think I remember a Facebook friend trying to get creative with a flame thrower or something like that. It didn’t go well.
Not sure if any service is available in your area similar to this one
www.fireantman.com
we used to have mounds of fire ants everywhere about 1’ apart, we tried to poison them ourselves for years, fireantman got rid of them, we are fire ant free far as we can tell
Risa
Happy Trails Trailers . com
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Consider using a bait-type product, perhaps combined with an IGR (insect growth regulator) one. Here’s a list of some products, a few of which are suitable for pasture use: http://articles.extension.org/pages/68606/the-latest-broadcast-on-fire-ant-control-products.
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If you use something that you pour on the mound, make a circle around the outside circumference of the mound, or the ants run to the nearest target and attack. Yes, you are the nearest target. For ant bites, I immediately use After Bite (the little tube of ammonia you buy at the pharmacy or big box store), and it can take the burn out. Some people are very allergic, so if someone gets severely bitten, or are in poor health, go to the ER as soon as possible.
The most effective poison for them is now illegal, diazinon (or however it’s spelled), they outlawed it a long time ago, because it’s basically nerve gas in a bottle. It worked. You will probably have to watch, treat, and keep retreating until you kill the queen. It’s tough to get to her.
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Jarpur’s link is excellent.
Here is a manual on fire ant control in pastures from the Southern Integrated Pest Management Center library.
https://www.agrilifebookstore.org/v/…bles/E-628.pdf
They say that if you use bait, you should probably keep animals off the treated area for a week. You can use electric tape to do that.
Don’t use lawn products for pastures. Find the ag products and use them. Don’t buy Amdro at Walmart. You want Amdro Pro for pastures.
Amdro is the longtime go to bait. Many years ago, the manufacturer was going to shut for some reason, and the State of Mississippi bought the rights to manufacture Amdro because it was the only effective fire ant control in existence at the time. Apparently it is still the go to for pastures and can be mixed with other more longlasting baits to provide a more thorough kill.
I have mounds but they aren’t in the pastures, they are in the dry sandy areas. As much as I would love to blast those suckers to oblivion, I just leave them alone. I think the flickers eat them, but there aren’t enough flickers to eat them all!
Amdro. When the mound is still small. Of course new ones pop up.
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P4Me - Did you send these to my house??? I’ve found 4 mounds in my pasture, and now a small satellite mound in my yard. All of the sudden - I’ve never seen these before. I’m going to try the bait from HD. I’ve seen those videos of aluminum castings of ant mounds - I’m sure molten aluminum would kill them. Sure, it might set the pasture on fire, but the ants would be dead.
StG
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fire ants are often moved to new locations in hay bales, potted plants, fire wood, garden soil, and bulk mulch.
This is the best info on treating fire ants in horse pastures I have found.
https://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/notes/forage/fireanthorse.pdf
The best treatment for fire ant bites is immersion in very hot water. The ants have small mandibles that they grip with, and then they sting and inject a toxic alkaloid venom very shallowly into the skin. The hot water, (hot enough to turn the skin pink but not hot enough to burn/scald the skin) destroys the venom.
If you live in an area colonized by fire ants be aware that the colonies (1000s of ants) leave the mound and form floating rafts to survive foods. The raft will then rapidly swarm any solid object they encounter… you included. Suddenly being stung by 1000s of fire ants can, and has, caused people pass out and drown in the flood waters.
Amdro powder works well; the crystals do not. There’s another brand at the Co-Op (can’t remember the name; round can, shaker top) that is a power that works pretty well. A couple of years back, just before a several day hard freeze, my banker went out and use a small auger (3" maybe?) and augured all the mounds he could find. That allowed the cold air to penetrate rather deeply and it really knocked his population down.
Not recommended, but one of my neighbors reported that he found a couple of 5 gal. jerry cans in a shed that were more than a year old. He used that old gas on the mounds and it killed them dead as Julius Caesar.
They are a plague around here right now. I’ll go out after them, again, after the upcoming spate of rain showers is done.
G.
I sprinkle Sevin in the stalls and on the feed room floor, It does kill ants, fleas and maybe some varieties of ticks, but isn’t toxic to cats and dogs and probably not horses, either. I pour boiling water in the mounds which is a temporary fix, but with ant control, what isn’t temporary?
yes…just beware of the initial explosion. It will burn for a long time and suffocate the whole nest. Very effective, I use this method for ridding ground bees and yellow jackets of their existence.
In my neighborhood, my neighbors and I each pay a service out of North Carolina to come spray 2x a year for fire ants. They do the job well. I asked them if it would kill off the other types of ants and they said no. Well, either it kills off the other types of ants or they move away, because all ants disappear when the fire ant guy treats my just under 5 acres 2x a year. Costs $500 a treatment. Well worth the price and getting rid of all the other ants is a real bonus. I found out from my neighbors about the company and they are great. Horses stay off of the grass after treatment for a few days or until it rains. I keep mine up for about a week.
That article has the best line ever:
Do not disturb mounds when using baits so as not to interfere with normal foraging patterns, no matter how much fun it is.
:lol: Yes, it is hard to resist poking the mound.
I use Amdro and treat the mounds as they come up but really, I never manage to get rid of them. New mounds always pop up someplace else sooner or later.
IDK, I rather liked this line, later referred to as the potato chip test:
To check if fire ants are active, place a few potato chips or puffed cheese snack on the ground. If ants are noticed within 30 minutes, then colonies are active and foraging. (with two little graphics of chips and poofs)
Who knew fire ants like cheezy-poofs?! :lol:
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