I have a friend whose dogs have found an ants nest in the garden. Any ideas how to get rid of them without using chemicals that could be toxic to the dogs?

Any ideas gratefully received.

Boil a kettle

Several kettles!! :-) Bicarbonate of soda genrously sprinkled around their exit holes will help too to finish off the stragglers. They take it down to the nest and it supposedly kills them off.

set the nest on fire and this gets rid of them completely, I had to have that done holes were made where the ants were and parrafin poured down and then lit . Mari

Don't use the product 'Nipon' as it is sweet and the dogs would be bound to lick, it's OK out of the dogs reach though. Came back from a long weekend with my husband and found ants all over my kitchen, ugh. Took a tube of Nipon and wrote with the clear liquid high on the wall a very personal message to my Husband with it, we were not laughing 10 mins later when the ants had made the message clear to the whole passing world to read. Got rid of the ants though. :D :o Jackie H

... and call an ambulance Mari :D

I suppose all the ants would fit on one stretcher Leigh :D Mari

LOL@ Mari :D

Well you asked for that Leigh , :D by the way welcome back from europe , hope you had a good time thanks for the card , bet you hate getting back to the grindstone :( . Mari :)

We have used Nippon ..excellent stuff . Also , a boiling kettle on the actual ants nest works. Last year I discovered that ants were getting into my kitchen via the hole the central heating pipe comes up. In a fit of pique I put flash liquid down there (I had been squishing ants for several weeks before I found where they were originating from). Never saw another ant

:)

Hot soapy water - lots of washing up liquid!

Isn't there something you can buy at supermarkets that you feed to the ants in a block form, they take it back to the nest, they all eat it, and it kills them all. Ant bait, I think.

Jane:)

I have bought a few of those, they are in plastic containers, quite small and I always managed to tread on them on the patio so I wont buy them now in case I tread on them again and the dogs eat the contents or the dogs pick them up to chew !! :o