How to Keep Ants Away from Dog Food (#4 is the Smartest)!
Taking proper care of your dog is perhaps one of the most important duties that you must perform if you have a dog. Pedro, my 1 year old Dachshund, means the world to me. Like every true dog lover on the planet, I ensure that I take good care of all his needs.
For Pedro, I ensure that he has a balanced diet. But, of late I have found that he was not eating well. The problem was ants. Whenever I served him his food, ants took over it. Pedro, naturally, avoided the food.
I found out that some of my friends were having the same issue. In the following post, we are going to look at how to keep ants away from dog food. So, without wasting much of your time, let’s get down to it.
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Some Alternative Ways that You Can Use
Via www.amazon.com
Petroleum Jelly is that one thing that every one of us has at our home. Most of us use it for a variety of reasons. However, you might not know but this versatile jelly is one of the few things that ants hate. Therefore, you can use petroleum jelly to repel ants from your dog’s food.
The feet of the ants get stuck in the petroleum jelly and hence they can’t cross the petroleum jelly and get to your dog’s food. You just need to apply petroleum jelly to the base and the side of the bowl and that should do the trick.
You might worry that the jelly would be harmful to your dog but in fact it isn’t it. The ants would be unable to climb the walls of the bowl and get into the food. They wouldn’t even care for it. So, you can use the jelly wherever you see fit.
#2. Place the Food in the Freezer
Sometimes, the ants might infest your dog food itself. Now, it is really hard to take out each chunk of dog food and clean it. But that doesn’t mean that there is no way to get rid of the ants from the food. Actually, it’s pretty easy.
You just need to keep your dog food in the freezer. The ants would die and then you could just take the food out and then prepare some working batches. You can sift the dead ants from the food with the help of a strainer or a trash can. However, you must be very careful that you remove all the ants because you don’t want your beloved dog to feed on ants.
Via www.amazon.com
Peppermint Oil is a great way to keep ants off your dog food. The best part is that you don’t need a whole lot of oil to keep the ants away. Just take a dab of oil on your finger or on a cotton swab and then put in on the outside and the inside of the bowl. The ants would find the smell of the oil repelling enough and you can rest assured that they would stay away from the food.
However, your dog would also find the smell a bit off-putting. So, ensure that you don’t put too much of oil in the bowl or else you would have your dog moving away from the food. Another thing that you must ensure that you use 100% peppermint oil, not any peppermint extract. Check the label carefully if you want to have effective treatment to the issue of ants.
# 4. Create a Moat Around the Dish
A simple yet effective way of keeping ants away is by creating a moat of water around your dog dish. Ants would drown in the water as they are not very good swimmers.
Now, you might think that doing that would take a lot of hassles but that is not the case. All you need to do is get a baking bowl from your local supermarket. Just make sure that the bowl is more than an inch bigger than the dish.
Then place the dish with the food inside the baking bowl and then pour water into the baking bowl, just up to the level of the dish. This would create a moat around the dish and prevent the ants from getting to your food. Now, that’s called smart, isn’t it?
#5. Use Diatomaceous Earth
Via healthyfocus.org
Diatomaceous Earth is another great way of keeping ants off. Not only does Diatomaceous Earth prevent ants from getting near your dog’s food, it also kills the ants that are already in the food.
Diatomaceous Earth is made from sedimentary rocks and it is in the form of super-fine crystals. The crystals cut the body of the ant and also dehydrate them.
Now, when you are using diatomaceous earth, you must ensure that you are using food grade substance. The ordinary pool grade earth is highly toxic for your dog. So, be very careful when using diatomaceous earth as a method for repelling ants.
#6. Kill Off the Scent of the Food
Most ants would invade food because they could sense the food. Most of the times, they sense the presence of food with bits and pieces of food lying around. So, you must try to kill off the scent.
How? Well, it’s simple, all you need to do is clean the area where your dog eats the meal after every meal. Use soap regularly and wash the area with disinfectant as that would eliminate any scent that the ants might trace.
#7. Use Chalk
Now, this trick might surprise many but it is really helpful. All you need to do is just make a big thick circle of chalk around the dog food and that might as well keep the ants away. I have tried this simple technique many a times and I must say that I am really surprised at how useful it has been for keeping ants away from my food.
You don’t need any special chalk for making the circle, just a normal chalk would do. Just ensure that you make a thick circle. One or two ants might cross the line but you wouldn’t have swarms of ants eating into the food of your dog.
Conclusion
These are some of the most effective ways for keeping ants away from your dog food. I have recommended these tips to my friends and they have found success with one way or the other. I do hope that if you are bothered by the same problem, then these would help you. Always try to give your dog the best in nutrition. Use fresh food as it would not attract ants.
If you like this article, then please share it so that your friends can know about these tips as well. If you have any questions or want to make any suggestions of your own, please write it in the comments section below. I am really looking forward to hearing from my fellow dog lovers. Until then, don’t stop loving that beautiful pet of yours.
