Ants...eek

Woke up this morning, went to the bird cage to see how the little ones were faring and found a ton of ants in their cage hanging around some lettuce that I left for them last night. I of course, cleaned everything off with cider vinegar, etc etc and vacuumed the floor thoroughly. I don't want any little ant-relatives coming by to check out the scene and was told I could use Terro liquid ant baits in the room with the keets. Does anyone know anything about this? Theoretically ants will feed on it and return to the nest and pass on to the colony. (I do hate to kill ants, btw, but I hate even more to see them crawling in my birds cage). Are there any alternatives that anyone has used successfully to stop ants from entering their bird areas? (besides cleaning, which of course I'm doing. And I will never leave lettuce or anything other than seed and pellet—which, btw, the ants were totally not interested in). thank you.

I don't know if Terro is okay or not. If the ants get into it and go into the cage, could they track it into the birds areas?

i had this problem last year with red ants and sameh got bit by them and had to be rushed to the vet

i had to keep on vaccumming for days.

I got some trays of ant killer from the exterminator guy, its sugar water with boric acid in it, very bad for keets so do not let the keets out of the cage while the trays are out, even if you THINK you have hidden the trays where the birds wont get them, trust me the risk is not worth it. You can not save a bird who has ingested boric acid.

i noticed the ants were coming in through the window, around the edges, went outside and found the ant pile, put ant killer on the pile itself, which can be bought at walmart in garden dept, any kind works whatever you choose. its important to kill the colony or they WILL keep returning.

then place just one or two of these small trays around where you think they are coming in at, window sills are common.

within a 24 hr period the ants will be totally gone, but only if you have killed the colony with ant killer.

trust me, ive had to deal with ant infestations more than once, when we moved to houston we bought a home that had been foreclosed and found out (after moving in) there was a massive ant colony under the house ...yipes!!!! we tried so many things and found this to work best.

i moved the bird cages out of my room during this period as well, they were moved into the hallway for about 36hrs.

thats all it took for ants to be totally gone.

thank you very much, Helwa. I will follow your advice. I just went onto the terro website and found their stuff is boric acid and honey. And they suggest the same process: Follow the ants to their entrance point and place some of the stuff there as well.

Arghhh. I'm going on vacation next week and my brother in law is coming twice a day to take care of the keets and I'm not sure how to handle all this now. But alas, I'm sure we'll figure it out.

they should be gone by then...

use that then, and get a bag of ant killer from walmart and pour the whole bag on it lol

trust me they wont last until next week.

maybe look into sealing the windows

you're a doll. thank you.