Customer Reviews

Uncle Milton Uncle Milton Giant Ant Farm

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I have my Ant Farm at work (Ironically, I work for Amazon.com), much to horror of some of my office mates. It makes a good discussion piece and its a great way to meet people in the office.

Setting up the ant farm is a no brainer. Make sure to get the sand in the display case, put in the starter water when the ants show up (Mine took about 3 weeks, and 100% were alive), and drop in the ants.

Below are my ant tips.

1) Make sure you stuff the plugs of cotton down into the sand as stated in the instructions. This creates the starter holes for the ants to start digging. Since the cotton plugs are evenly spaced, you will get nice ant tunnels throughout the farm.

2) You must have the ants in a tightly regulated temperature enviroment. If you put this guys in an hot enviroment, they will die quickly. Same goes for cold enviroment. If the temperature where you have the ant farm varies to much the ants will die quickly. The office here is about the same comfortable temperature all the time, so I think the ants will live a long time.

3) Keep the ant farm away from people who have to touch stuff to experience it. I have already caught 2 people trying to pick up the case and look at the ants. A cave in of the tunnels will kill the ants. This is not a hands on toy.

4) The ants are replaceable. You can buy fresh ants. People who complain that the ants die quickly are not following the instructions, or are not taking a longview on owning an ant farm. If the ants die, for whatever reason, you can buy new ones.

I think you have to view the Ant Farm as a product in three seperate stage.

1) You get the ant house and wait for the ants. The delay in receiving the ants is difficult (it made us all "antsy"? ) but we were pleased with how few dead ants there were on arrival. Think of it as a chance to read up on ant behavior....

2) The ants arrive and do their thing. Watching them build their tunnels was absolutely fascinating -- for a week. The adults in our house were just as fascinated as the children.

3) The decline and fall of an ant empire. After a week, we had a dramatic die off, despite rigerously following the instructions re. feeding, temperature, humidity, etc. Now we have ONE lone ant, wandering the tunnels, who has lived 4 weeks past the life of her companions. Kind of a sad end for a social creature, when you think about it....

Bottom line: If I had known 99% of our ants would die at the end of a week, I would not have invested [the money], but we enjoyed them while they were there.

My mother threw mine out when I was young so of course I got another for my son. Sure, you can build your own, but for the small price this is well worth the investment to get one that will work first time.

But here are some hints for using the ant farm from one who has learned from experience:

1. Be careful putting in the "sand." Follow the instructions very carefully, and make sure to keep the cotton plugs securely in place. Don't "pack" the sand in AT ALL or the sides will spread outward and the farm will leak.

2. When you get the ants, make sure to let them "cool off" in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to slow them down before you try to dump them into the farm. They look immobile but as soon as you open the lid of that tiny jar those fiesty little buggers are all over the place! And believe me, they are FAST. Use an earlier-prepared big paper funnel to help get them all in.

3. Be very careful when taking off the "feeding doors" at the top. They fall into the farm VERY EASILY and you will need a LONG tweezer or equivalent to get them out.

4. Place the art farm in an already well-lighted on something that won't shake, and where the little kids can't grab it down to "take a look."

Good luck, and have fun!

I had this ant farm as a child and LOVED it. It was very educational and entertaining. The ants created their own little community, along with connecting "highways" (tunnels), a graveyard (they carried the dead ants to one little area of the farm and buried them), and even a food "cellar" (they stored all their extra food in one little area at the bottom of the farm). My ants lived for several months and only died when my mother was cleaning house and tried to move it. The tunnels all collapsed and the ants were killed. I am currently a 4th grade teacher and purchasing this for my classroom. I am going to use it to teach habitats and communitites, but most importantly lifeskills. Ants exemplify so many lifeskills...patience, cooperation, perseverance, endurance, caring, effort, problem solving, etc. WOW!! So much we can learn from one tiny creature.

Ants ,Ants , Ants ! How disturbing ! This is a terrific way for children of all ages to peek into the mysterious underground world of ants.After mailing the certificate off to recieve my ants I checked the mailbox with eager anticipation .Finally my ants arrived ! After setting up the farm I watched the ants play, eat, clean themselves and then die. They only lasted for a month, but ohhh what a glorious month it was! Highly recommended and educational.

Reading some of the reviews of this product, I'm amazed by the overblown expectations some people have regarding this product. Did you really expect the ants to come in the box? Did you really expect the company to send you a queen? C'mon...that's about as likely as the ants really wearing little straw hats and driving tractors. What you get is a great educational toy that can keep a child interested for hours, days, or, in the case of my 4-year-old daughter, months.

This is not a toy that you give to a child and say "here, go play." Take a bit of time to observe the ants with your child. Bring over a magnifying glass (keep it out of the sun, please) and watch the ants up close. Look at them before your child goes to sleep, then go over first thing in the morning to see what kinds of new tunnels they've built. Watch them interact and clean themselves. Teach your children that there is real joy in simply watching and observing another creature.

One word of advice: Do NOT overfeed your ants. The instructions are fairly explicit about this, and it is worth paying attention. Give them just a couple of drops of sugar water every week or so, and a drop or two of plain water when the farm looks like it is drying out. More frequently, and you'll end up killing the ants. Trust me... our longest living ants lasted more than 3 months!

I have no clue why all of these people are complaining. If you order ants in the winter expect the ants to arive weeks or months later, because if they were to send you the ants in the middle of winter they would all die from the cold. Its not Uncle Miltons fault, if you read the instructions it clearly states that shiping will be delayed if the weather is too cold for the ants to survive. People are always gonna have something to complain about. This toy is a great gift if your child love bugs, and its easy to set up and take care of the ants. The only thing that you would really need to worry about with this toy is that after the ants have tunnels built and you move the ant farm around alot then you might collapse the tunnels, but if you are careful don't worry about that at all. The main thing you need to do is read the instructions and you're set, it has all you need to know in the instruction booklet so you don't need to worry about anything. From the ant lover, Ryan Judd

Every year for "A" week I break out the ant farm and collect ants from my home. The children love to watch the ants work and they often try feeding them different things. After two weeks we let the ants go home. If you are a teacher I would get this. It is a great way to teach about Ants.

Many customers have said that it took forever for their ants to arrive. We received our ants in 3 weeks and 2 days which is within the 2-4 weeks range given on the certificate. Ants cannot be shipped when it is too hot or cold in your area which is why we ordered ours in May.

My six year old son got the gel version of this for his birthday. When our ants to arrived (after waiting a couple of months) I reopened the original box to pull out the farm only to find the gel inside the farm molding. Yuck! All the ants died quickly too.

I called the Uncle Milton customer service number. They were great! The farm was a gift so I didn't have a receipt and didn't know where it was bought. They said there were previous problems with mold and recommended their sand version instead. They sent to us their Giant Ant farm and two weeks later our new ants came (all for free). I didn't even have to send moldy one back to them.

We've had the farm up and going for just five days. It's fascinating! Better than any fish tank. My kids and I love coming home from our day and seeing what the ants have accomplished.

With the gel we wouldn't have needed to feed or water the ants but it's kind of fun thinking about what you're going to give them next. A piece of hamburger meat, apple, bread...?

The one problem I did find is with the feeding caps on top that you must remove to insert the ants and feed and water them. Before I even put the ants in I found that when I removed the caps they often fell into the farm. To keep this from happening, or to help retrieve the cap if it did fall in, I strung some thread through an air hole. Just a tip if you find this a problem too.