The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

Im thinking what protein rich food I can give to my carebara colony. I have pet cats s I have plenty of supply of dry cat food. do you think this will work guys?

I don't see why not. We keep our cat in our garage and ants from the yard are constantly in his food bowl. We use the dry food with the "tender centers" and the ants can not leave it alone. Try a little and check it out.

i cant say for any other sp. but my daughters pogonomyrmex sp. love cat food. i give them a couple of pieces here and there. what looks like they like the most, is when i put a couple of drops of honey/sugar water on the cat food, as it softens it. good luck.

You might need to add water or something to soften the dry cat food.

thanks guys I will try it.

Yes, it should work! Can't wait to see photos of the colony. Hope you can also journal about them because they are a notoriously hard species to keep, even for experienced ant keepers. I have failed twice to even get them to nanitics.

I have successfully fed my Formica ant colonies wet cat food, but in one nest which was especially humid/moist at the time, the cat food got moldy within a day or so. They just left it there for awhile, then covered it with little wood/bark chips that I had added as a substrate for them. After a few experiences like that, I let the cat food dry out a bit first prior to feeding it to them. This helped a little bit, but occasionally still got moldy. Perhaps I was feeding them too frequently or too much??

I give a piece. and look like they like it. the moment I put the food they pour and get it. but after few hour they leave the cat food. maybe they have enough so they just ignore it in the out world. well the colony is around 50 wokers.

Sorry for resurrecting a thread from the past.

I fed my ants (lasius niger) a piece of crushed dry cat food last night, and they've carried all the pieces back into their nest and are happily feeding it to the babies.

Has anyone had experience feeding ants cat food long term? I have an unlimited supply of cat food, so if they're happy with it I'm considering using it as a primary protein source and just adding insects when I find them running around the house.

The brand of cat food I'm using is Iams, which is 40% dried chicken/turkey.