The Hay Experts Blog

If you’ve read our earlier blog entries, you will have seen we have been testing Bugs Be Gone from Gorgeous Guineas, following the discovery of a huge ant hill right in the middle of the bunny’s play area.

The update is a sort of ‘good news, bad news’ situation.

The good news is that the nest, after several treatments (and significant ‘help’ from Billy the bunny), is no more; the grass is now growing back and Billy seems almost as pleased as we are!

The only bad news is that the ants, rather than moving out of our garden completely as we’d hoped, seem to have just relocated to a different part of the garden.

And where they built an ants nest in the bunny’s play area, they have now built an ants mountain. There is no other way to describe it – it is huge! Impressive, but huge!

I wonder whether those lovely people at Gorgeous Guineas can supply Bugs Be Gone in bulk….?

Every now and then something unusual happens. This time it was in the shape of a furry ball of sick kitty. Only around 5 weeks old, kitty, whom we ultimately named Buttons (I’ll tell you why shortly), was ‘given’ to me by its Mum who was unable to care for it.

Mum is a wild ferral cat (wild…not!) who has taken up residence in the office, bringing her kittens to us daily from just 10 days old; we’ve seen them grow, learn to play and figure out solid food. Sadly one day Buttons was no where to be seen. Assuming the worst we fussed over Mum and the other kittens. But just before we left for the night, Mum brought Buttons to us.

What a sight. Severly dehydrated, unable to stand, unable to keep anything down (or in). We called him Stinky at that stage. You can imagine why! We took him straight to the vets who were not confident of his prognosis. So tiny and so poorly.

48 hrs of fluids and antibiotics can do wonders. “He’s bright as a button, and causing chaos” the vet reported. OK, so not very imaginative with the name, but it suits him perfectly.

Trouble was, despite a rapid turnaround, he still needed round the clock nursing, and we had no idea if Mum would accept him back (smelling of vet, and all that..).

I spent an amazing, and exhausting 36 hours nursing this little chap every two hours. It was so rewarding to see him flourish from being so poorly. Not only did he go from strength to strength, he was accepted back by Mum (eventually), and developed into an amazing little character.

And best of all he’s now in a wonderful new home with one of his brothers … and I understand he’s still causing chaos.

Little ...but Mighty....and bright as a Button!

So we seem to be doing a little extreme product testing for the lovely folks at Gorgeous Guineas!

We now have one of the largest ants nests I have ever seen right in the middle of the bunnies garden area. Obviously using chemicals is totally out of the question, and I learnt form a very early age that ants are not to be messed with!

So we’re trying Bugs Be Gone from Gorgeous Guineas. It isn’t much liked by insect nasties, (and being totally safe for the little ones of course) we are trying it on the entire ant colony under the guidance of Chrissie at Gorgeous Guineas.  

Bugs Be Gone is a natural product and comes from the Neem tree which contains many unique compounds that seem to make pests disappear.  Chrissie reports the product can be lightly sprinkled on buns’ bottoms, in the corners of cages, in litter trays, around the feet of outdoor hutches and outside shed doors to help where there are unwanted insect visitors.

After two doses on our colony the ants are definately not impressed. Trouble is, the mound is so big I wonder how many are actually being affected.

Caught in the act!

Enter Billy … who decided us hoomins needed a little extra help with our ant removal techniques. Despite the cordon around the mound he has decided to dig the nest out.

Twice now, in fact.

Billy 1, Ants o.