How Ants Cause Problems to Pets?

Make our pets happy and not ants.

Our pets are the most precious part of our lives. We spend a lot of time and energy in taking care of them. Yet, sometimes we fail to notice simplest of things that harm our pets.

If you have ants in your house, your pets are vulnerable to various health hazards. Moreover, if you have pets in your house, the chances of ants entering your house increase. Leftover food in feeding trays can attract ants. Some species of ants are more attracted to the protein found in dog and cat food than sugary items.

Ants entering your dogs and cats are even more dangerous, as they can initiate allergic reactions in them. Ant bites in some cases can be poisonous.

It , thus , becomes extremely important to get rid of ants from your house. However using normal pest control can be toxic to your pets. So here are a few simple steps that you can follow to keep your house and your pets safe from ants.

Make your house inhospitable to ants

Keep your food in sealed boxes. Ants come out of their nests only to find food. Make it difficult for them to find food in your house. Clean your pet trays immediately after feeding your pets.

If you have dogs or cats as your pets that spend a lot of time outdoors, it might be them, who are bring in the ants to your house. Brush and clean your pets immediately after their walk or time spent outside the house.

Monitor your backyard or gardening area regularly for ant hills and even other harmful bugs.

Cinnamon oil and cloves applied strategically around the house keeps the ants away. It makes your house smell better and drives the ants away.

Peppermint oil and lemon juice around windows, door lines and wall corners messes up with their sense of tracking and makes it impossible for them to enter.

What to do when you find ants in your house

As you find ants in your house it might be extremely tempting to spray ant killers on them immediately and to get rid of them. However, it is recommended to be a little patient. The ants that we see in our house are worker ants that carry the food to their queen in the nest. Using ant killers will only kill the workers, while the queen will continue to lay eggs and send more ants to your house.

The first step is to clean your house, mop the floors and make it extremely difficult for ants to find food. Next, you can leave certain ant baits in areas where you commonly see the ants coming from. The worker ants will carry this to the nest , eventually attacking the queen. These ant baits will also make it easier for you to locate the nest.

Using chemical ant killers is especially not advisable with houses with pets. They can harm your pets as much as they can harm ants.

Other natural ant killers are more suitable and effective. Cream of wheat, corn meal , a baking soda powdered sugar mixture, are some commonly used ant baits that eventually make the ant colonies disappear.

When you find cracks or regions, that lead you to the nest of your ants, pouring boiling water and dish soap in these regions will make the nests disappear faster than vinegar can.

Sometimes, Ant control is a process that has both task if you dont take the right steps at the right time. Focus on more permanent solutions. You would not like your pets to interact with those ants regularly. Better safe than sorry.

Danny Simmons is a 28-year-old scientific researcher who enjoys watching YouTube videos, bowling and theatre. He is stable and careful, but can also be very lazy and a bit impatient.