Customer Reviews

Uncle Milton Uncle Milton Giant Ant Farm

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I would never recommend a Milton ant farm to anyone. Believing the hype on the box, I bought two gel farms. One for my primary class and one for my own children at home. First of all, what they DON'T tell you on the package is that they only ship to interior/northern states and Canada between April and September. If you recall, the school year ends in June. So for many teachers this won't work...but I didn't know that when I spent my money. But wait..it gets worse.

We ordered ants in March so they'd be shipped in April. They were to be sent express, but could take, we were told, 'up to' 3 weeks. 3 weeks after they were supposedly shipped, we had no ants. We called. They gave us a tracking number. A week later 2 tubes of ants came. All but a few were dead. Small surprise. They starved. We also noticed that Milton was not the shipper. "Whoever They Were Toy Store' paid under $2 to ship the ants and we had paid CA$17 for EXPRESS! Of the ones we got, none would tunnel. We even had a retired high school teacher try to help. He had a traditional sand farm when he was teaching, that he built himself and had been doing farms for years. No matter what he and I tried, the ants hated the gel. They just kept dying and the live ones stacked up the bodies of the dead until they were all dead. It was pitiful to watch the last one, alone.

We called Milton and told them about the shipping method and dead ants. 'They' sent more ants. Same thing. Shipment took more than 3 weeks, sent snail mail again. Dead ants. By this time it was mid June. School was almost over. We called Milton again. They said 'oops sorry - no more we can do - we're not sending more ants'. Then they claimed they don't actually 'ship' the ants direct. They have 'agents' that do it. They told us we'd have to argue with the agent that actually shipped the ants. We got the number and called the shipper. GET THIS. They said that the first $15 we paid was for Milton to send the ants to the agent. The remaining $2 was for the snail mail to us. The agent was going to 'lose money' if they paid for a better method. (I guess our money didn't matter.)
Their response to our situation? 'Sorry, you'll have to talk to Milton'.

So, we got the royal run-around. We called Milton again. Their solution? Return the ant kits to the retailer we bought them from. We got them from ToysRUS, who said...."Sorry, you've used the kits. No refund."
We call Milton back. They say..."Ok, we'll refund your money. BUT you have to send the kits to us.........registered and insured mail, your cost."

Punch line time.... The shipping was more than we paid for the farms. We still have them. Useless things.

Oh yes, and I forgot. The second punch line...the ants die after about 6-8 weeks anyway, even if you get live, healthy ants, so...you need to keep paying for more ants. The same ants that most states and all provinces can only get between April 1 and August 31.
Your kids get to watch the ants die, over and over again...for piles of your money. Cool, eh? NOT

Here's a better idea, google ant farms at antcam. We finally found these guys. They build regular old farms that don't collapse or they give you plans to do your own. The ants are happy. They don't die needlessly and you can go get your own ants in your backyard.
(HEY why didn't Milton tell us this in the first place?? Er.)

It's a money grab. Nothing more. Cruel to the ants and expensive for the buyer. Run away from this one, especially if you live in an interior or nothern state and especially if you live in Canada.
Shame on you Uncle Milton.