Consider yourself very lucky because I’ve had issues with them biting/stinging my mare badly multiple times!
And omg I seriously thought about starting ant wars! Hahaha
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Amdro is the only thing that really works. I sprinkle it on/around the mound and usually stab the mound with my toe to get the critters to come out. Then you can watch them carry the bait down… die, die!!! It takes a while for the treatment to work, be patient. I have also used extinguish on mounds that are in really bad places (in front of front door, near where I park my car…) to get rid of many of the ants, then follow up with amdro to get the queen.
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I use this stuff called Surrender. It smells to high hell but works overnight. Amdro worked 0% last time I used it
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A while back I wrote about using a product called TalstarP. It’s a liquid you mix with water and then drench the nest. It works. Well. But it’s not approved for use in pastures. So I use it on fence lines, drive ways, and other areas where we don’t graze animals.
I apply it using either a powered 4 gal. backpack sprayer (it can take more than a gallon of material fully soak a fire ant nest as they can run up to 3 feet below ground). If I’m going to do a large area I use the 55 gal. rig on the small tractor. I can kill a LOT of fire ants with that one.
I wrote to the company and asked if they had any plans to seek licensure for livestock areas and they said no, it was too expensive. Personally, I think they made a mistake. This stuff really works, is not too hard to apply, and the market is big and getting bigger.
G.
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Yes, Talstar is excellent for fire ants. Use it all over the rest of the property, knocks them right out.
I’m in Blythewood, SC and have 7 acres. I use Extinguish Pro IGR. It works GREAT and is safe to use with the horses grazing that same day…I do keep them off it for a day, but the instructions say its not necessary.
I broadcast it 2x/year. Easy!
We used Amdro in the pastures and never had any issue with the horses eating it, it smells so bad I’m sure they wouldn’t be interested in the mounds you sprinkle it on. Part of the problem with fire ants is their mounds can go very deep in the soil so it’s hard to get all of them and if you have neighboring properties that don’t treat their mounds then those ants will eventually move your way. It’s a constant battle.
I used diatomaceous earth. Like a coupe of cups per hill. Dump some on, kick the hill. Walk away quickly… and repeat!
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When we used TelstarP in an experiment it worked very well but is not authorized for use in grazing or production fields. This spring we’ll use it aggressively along fence lines and in non-production areas.
One thing I noted was that it took a large amount of water (up to 2.5 gal.) to fully treat a nest. This suggests a very large, deep underground nest. If people were to treat the nests with water on very cold days would this be effective? You give the queen a Hobson’s Choice: drown or make it up through the column of water and into freezing air. Doing the application late in the p.m. where there would be several hours of deep cold would seem an effective strategy. Would it?
But these are questions. What would the reality be? Can the queen swim up three feet of water column and survive? Do they have an ability to survive in deep cold if “flushed out” of the nest? If you’ve got real cold and the top few inches of the ground freeze, sealing the nest, what happens?
This won’t work in FL or So. TX but in the “border states” or other places that do get days of below freezing temps would this be an effective, if labor intensive, strategy?
Thanks, in advance, for any thoughts.
G.
You definitely wouldn’t drown them & ants would have no problem floating up through deep water. I personally witnessed fire ants rafting during Tropical Storm Allison in TX in 2001, they are not phased by even the worst floods.
It also doesn’t matter if it gets cold at the top of the nest, as the ants can move deep into the ground. They do have very deep & complex nests, so they have many options, including quickly digging new tunnels. It would take a lot of water to fill all that up, if even possible, you won’t get 100% of the ants, & at the very least, it’s a terrible waste of water.
Fire ants do die if frozen (I can also vouch for this as I had to freeze them to count them during a survey), so they can’t live say, in permafrost (although that is close to non-existent anymore). But it would have to be prolonged (many days) & very cold to take out entire colonies – this won’t happen in my latitudes (Carolinas), more like Maine.
So no, this would not be effective or efficient. But good questions.
Thank you for the reply.
Would adding salt (like the kind you can get for water softeners which is relatively inexpensive) work? Can you think of any other common additives of limited toxicity that would routinely be available to an unlicensed person that might do the job?
I don’t know if I mentioned it here or not, but a couple of years back my banker was drilling some fence post holes using a 3" auger. Just before period of deep cold he went out and augered a bunch of ant nests. He reported it worked quite well. That cold snap was deep for us, with almost 5 days of continuous below freezing temps. Since we rarely have cold snaps like that I’m not sure it’s a solution viable over a wide area.
G.
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No - salt is bad for both your soil & aquatic wildlife (runoff) & can be tolerated by ants. In general, one should avoid introducing random toxicants into soil & groundwater, there are lots of other beneficial animals that could be harmed. And Amdro is already available to anyone & can at least be relatively targeted to the mound being treated. Believe me, if there were some other effective alternative, we would be using it in wildlife biology - invasive fire ants have decimated many rare species including the critically endangered ground nesting bird I used to work with. There are people who work full time just trying to find better ways to control them. I wish it was easier.
I use Amdro granules dry around the barn and house. For pastures and Grove, I use Spectracide watered in from a tank on the Gator. I’ve learned the hard way not to let the mound get high in the pastures, they turn to concrete and are hard to relevel.
Thank you. You didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear; you did tell me what I needed to hear. Thank you for a breath rationality is our irrational world! 
I was aware of the dangers of salt (I know what the Romans did after they leveled Carthage; it is also frequently suggested as a weed killer along fence lines) but sometimes you have to accept one danger to avoid others. Now that I know it won’t work then I know that there is no benefit to balance the burden.
Tell your science friends to re-double their efforts re the fire ants. Then they can take on the snake head carp.
G.
Diatomasious earth!!! Knock the top off the hill (I use the mower) sprinkle the DE generously over the whole hill…ALL DEAD the next day…safe for other animals! And CHEAP!! I bought 50 pounds of it 12 years ago and still have about half of it left. Works great on pets for fleas too!
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The best large-scale control for invasive fire ants we have right now at the management level are these badass things: Phorid flies. They were first tried in FL & then used other places following initial success. They are a parasitic fly which lay their eggs in ant heads. When the larvae hatch & grow, they pop off the ant heads. It doesn’t eradicate the ants, but it DOES significantly reduce their activity above ground (I mean, would you come out if things were waiting to lay eggs in your head?), which translates to a meaningful difference for the rest of us above ground critters. You can read about them here: http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/beneficial/flies/ant_decapitating_phorids.htm
As for snakeheads & carp (different things & there are also multiple species of introduced carp), they are indeed very bad business & we’re trying to figure out any effective way to curb them (although thankfully we don’t have snakeheads or Asian carp in NC yet, but Common Carp have been long established & we have other bad fishes, like Flathead Catfish). Simple removal isn’t enough. If you do ever encounter any, eat them! Or at the very least, don’t put them back in the water, leave a snack for the raccoons/vultures/coyotes/everyone else.
I friend of ours has had them jump into her boat on Watts Bar Lake. I don’t think she kept them until she docked. I’ll pass that on to her. I, myself, am boatless. ;(
G.
Yes, the head-poppers are awesome – I am a self-certified “bunny hugger,” I don’t like to hurt anything I don’t have to & I apologize to every animal I have to put in a specimen jar, but I take exception to fire ants & ticks, both of which I would take a certain amount of satisfaction in decapitating!
The jumping carp are the worst kind. A good whack on the head to dispatch it, then throw it in the woods. With the caveat: only if already near shore. I don’t know TN regs, would have to check TWRA site, but I would hope those species are on their blacklist of “no possession allowed,” as they are here. In which case, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble for carrying one around when they are trying to do a good thing & not put it back.
Good advice. If any of the TWRA guys are in court this week I’ll ask them.
G.
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Back in the 40’s my grandmother used boiling water on fire ants. She poured it down the hole every day till they were gone. I don’t know if it would be practical in your situation though.
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