Lmao!!!So a little after 4 hours later, they got their pool back. This was followed by another flurry of duckie craziness. They completely lose their minds as you can note in this picture of Kaine, Greta and Snow...
Silly duckies!
1900 Gallons of ducky bliss
- Thread starter Tevyes Dad
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You know, when I saw Greta picking on Tevye I had an inkling she was tomboyish, but I didn't think she'd swing both ways! 
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Bahahaha!So a little after 4 hours later, they got their pool back. This was followed by another flurry of duckie craziness. They completely lose their minds as you can note in this picture of Kaine, Greta and Snow...
That's funny! It make me think of this post from the peafowl forum:So a little after 4 hours later, they got their pool back. This was followed by another flurry of duckie craziness. They completely lose their minds as you can note in this picture of Kaine, Greta and Snow...
Silly duckies!
Posted by Zazouse:
Quote:
So a little after 4 hours later, they got their pool back. This was followed by another flurry of duckie craziness. They completely lose their minds as you can note in this picture of Kaine, Greta and Snow...
Silly duckies!
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funny ducks.
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Update: It has been Nearly 4 months since we have installed the pool. It looks like we won't be able to get the stock tank any time soon (just not available if we don't want to order three) but we are still trying. I have put a shade structure over the pool (which we have dubbed the "Ducky Dome") to keep most of the direct sun off of it to slow the heating of the pool and make us a nice hang out spot with the ducks...
Algae control: Now that we have gotten past the hottest days of the year, I feel I can report on Algae. Keep in mind we are in the relatively cool state of Montana, but we had weeks that stayed in the high 90s so your mileage may vary. We define a partial fill as draining the pool to the lowest point where the ducks can still use the ramp to get in and out of pool easily followed by refilling the pool to its full point. This is about 500 gallons of water. (a little less than 2 8ft kiddie pools). We put a cheap digital thermometer with a probe in the pool so we could keep tabs on the temperature. When the pool temperature exceeds 60 degrees, we do a partial fill. Most of the time this is once or twice / week. On the hottest weeks, it is every day. When we clean the pool (every Saturday), there are very little amounts of green algae in some of the folds on the bottom of the pool. There is an easy to remove red algae ring around the collar at the water line. Very little algae in both cases. About once/month, when the algae has built up a little, we pour about a cup of bleach into the empty pool, scrub the algae up with the bleach using a broom, then we rinse and pump out all the water before filling (no bleach for the ducks). This only adds about 15 minutes to our routine (usually just me working). One week my wife blew off doing a partial refill when the temperature got up to 64 degrees (I was on the road that day). She did a partial the next afternoon. That weekend, the bottom of the pool was nearly covered with green algae and most of the sides were 50% covered with red algae. It took about an hour to clean it up (both of us working) with bleach and much more scrubbing than normal. This emphasizes the importance of responding quickly to rises above 60 degrees. So after having gone through the worst of the summer, I feel confident in saying that if you can keep the temperature at 60 degrees or lower, algae is not a major concern.
Draining method: We have perfected the lowest effort drain method. It takes us about 1 hour to drain the pool using our pump and a 1-1/2" pvc hose. I wrapped the bottom of the sump pump in metal tape leaving only a 1/4" gap at the bottom so now it pumps nearly all the water out. We toss the pump in the pool and plug it in then forget it for about 45 minutes. During this time we can clean the duck house, collect the eggs from around the planet and spend some time with the ducks. During the last 15 minutes of pumping, I stir up the water with a broom so that nearly all the "solids" are pumped out and I use the same broom to scrub the ring around the collar algae and the little bit in the folds on the bottom. Once that is done I replace the pump with our shop vac (with the internal pump) and vacuum up the rest of the water and spray down the pool with a garden hose moving the last little bit of dirt to where the end of the shop vac sits. Shop vac now is running clean enough that we only have to clean it out about once/month. Time to drain and do all duck chores at the same time - about 1:10. Time actually spent on the pool - 25 minutes.
Fill: We fill with a garden hose. Up until recently, we had about 200ft of hose on a reel and we just pulled that out and filled the pool with it. Filling time was about 4 hours. Recently, my wife took about 125 feet of the hose that was on the reel and relocated it to an intermediate reel elsewhere. Now with our 75ft of hose the fill time was taking just over 3 hours! Because of this, I ordered a 50ft 3/4" id hose. I believe this will put our fill time between 1 and 2 hours. I will update this next week when we try it. We use the fill time to get breakfast and go do errands.
Skimming - actually not that much. Every once in a while a duck blows their feathers in the pool, but other than that, maybe once or twice / week a few minutes.
So after optimizing our work, it takes about 30 minutes/week over 4-1/2 hours to take care of the pool with about 1/2 hour per month extra for bleach cleaning the pool and cleaning out the shop vac. The partial fills take about 15 minutes to drain and 1 hour to fill and involves no real work (plug in pump - unplug pump - turn on hose - turn off hose). Hopefully with the new hose, we will get the total time down to weekly 2-1/2 hours and partial fill to 40 minutes total.
So overall, I would say this is less work than maintaining kiddie pools (for us - we have that advantage of having a swamp to act as our "filter").
The best part of the big pool has been giving the ducks fish!!! Every Saturday when we do our other errands during fill time, the last place we stop is the pet store where we buy 100 feeder fish. We acclimate the fish to the pool by first floating their bag in the pool (30 minutes), then letting them swim in the pool (30 minutes). Then we unblock the ramp... Ducks know what that means... pool is open! When we gave the ducks fish in the kiddie pool, they ate them in seconds - too expensive and not much fun. Now in this pool they have to dive down over 2 feet to get the fish. Tevye tries really hard but he is just to buoyant and slow - he can "fly" under water spasticly by flapping his wings, but he can't dive under with just his feet. He might get the occasional dead/injured fish but that is about it but he seems to have fun trying. On the other extreme is Entie... She is the fish hunter. She gets 1/3 - 1/2 the fish herself. She is lightning fast and can swim under water multiple laps if necessary to catch a fish - she probably averages 2 - 3 fish per minute. When she is on a fish's trail, she looks like an X-wing from the original "Star Wars" - dodging back and forth after the fish. Tella is the next best and usually gets at least 10 fish for herself. The rest of the ducks get a couple fish each but there is plenty of excitement. Kaine is usually in jail so only gets to participate occasionally. Greta, Noir and Pocahontas usually don't play.
Algae control: Now that we have gotten past the hottest days of the year, I feel I can report on Algae. Keep in mind we are in the relatively cool state of Montana, but we had weeks that stayed in the high 90s so your mileage may vary. We define a partial fill as draining the pool to the lowest point where the ducks can still use the ramp to get in and out of pool easily followed by refilling the pool to its full point. This is about 500 gallons of water. (a little less than 2 8ft kiddie pools). We put a cheap digital thermometer with a probe in the pool so we could keep tabs on the temperature. When the pool temperature exceeds 60 degrees, we do a partial fill. Most of the time this is once or twice / week. On the hottest weeks, it is every day. When we clean the pool (every Saturday), there are very little amounts of green algae in some of the folds on the bottom of the pool. There is an easy to remove red algae ring around the collar at the water line. Very little algae in both cases. About once/month, when the algae has built up a little, we pour about a cup of bleach into the empty pool, scrub the algae up with the bleach using a broom, then we rinse and pump out all the water before filling (no bleach for the ducks). This only adds about 15 minutes to our routine (usually just me working). One week my wife blew off doing a partial refill when the temperature got up to 64 degrees (I was on the road that day). She did a partial the next afternoon. That weekend, the bottom of the pool was nearly covered with green algae and most of the sides were 50% covered with red algae. It took about an hour to clean it up (both of us working) with bleach and much more scrubbing than normal. This emphasizes the importance of responding quickly to rises above 60 degrees. So after having gone through the worst of the summer, I feel confident in saying that if you can keep the temperature at 60 degrees or lower, algae is not a major concern.
Draining method: We have perfected the lowest effort drain method. It takes us about 1 hour to drain the pool using our pump and a 1-1/2" pvc hose. I wrapped the bottom of the sump pump in metal tape leaving only a 1/4" gap at the bottom so now it pumps nearly all the water out. We toss the pump in the pool and plug it in then forget it for about 45 minutes. During this time we can clean the duck house, collect the eggs from around the planet and spend some time with the ducks. During the last 15 minutes of pumping, I stir up the water with a broom so that nearly all the "solids" are pumped out and I use the same broom to scrub the ring around the collar algae and the little bit in the folds on the bottom. Once that is done I replace the pump with our shop vac (with the internal pump) and vacuum up the rest of the water and spray down the pool with a garden hose moving the last little bit of dirt to where the end of the shop vac sits. Shop vac now is running clean enough that we only have to clean it out about once/month. Time to drain and do all duck chores at the same time - about 1:10. Time actually spent on the pool - 25 minutes.
Fill: We fill with a garden hose. Up until recently, we had about 200ft of hose on a reel and we just pulled that out and filled the pool with it. Filling time was about 4 hours. Recently, my wife took about 125 feet of the hose that was on the reel and relocated it to an intermediate reel elsewhere. Now with our 75ft of hose the fill time was taking just over 3 hours! Because of this, I ordered a 50ft 3/4" id hose. I believe this will put our fill time between 1 and 2 hours. I will update this next week when we try it. We use the fill time to get breakfast and go do errands.
Skimming - actually not that much. Every once in a while a duck blows their feathers in the pool, but other than that, maybe once or twice / week a few minutes.
So after optimizing our work, it takes about 30 minutes/week over 4-1/2 hours to take care of the pool with about 1/2 hour per month extra for bleach cleaning the pool and cleaning out the shop vac. The partial fills take about 15 minutes to drain and 1 hour to fill and involves no real work (plug in pump - unplug pump - turn on hose - turn off hose). Hopefully with the new hose, we will get the total time down to weekly 2-1/2 hours and partial fill to 40 minutes total.
So overall, I would say this is less work than maintaining kiddie pools (for us - we have that advantage of having a swamp to act as our "filter").
The best part of the big pool has been giving the ducks fish!!! Every Saturday when we do our other errands during fill time, the last place we stop is the pet store where we buy 100 feeder fish. We acclimate the fish to the pool by first floating their bag in the pool (30 minutes), then letting them swim in the pool (30 minutes). Then we unblock the ramp... Ducks know what that means... pool is open! When we gave the ducks fish in the kiddie pool, they ate them in seconds - too expensive and not much fun. Now in this pool they have to dive down over 2 feet to get the fish. Tevye tries really hard but he is just to buoyant and slow - he can "fly" under water spasticly by flapping his wings, but he can't dive under with just his feet. He might get the occasional dead/injured fish but that is about it but he seems to have fun trying. On the other extreme is Entie... She is the fish hunter. She gets 1/3 - 1/2 the fish herself. She is lightning fast and can swim under water multiple laps if necessary to catch a fish - she probably averages 2 - 3 fish per minute. When she is on a fish's trail, she looks like an X-wing from the original "Star Wars" - dodging back and forth after the fish. Tella is the next best and usually gets at least 10 fish for herself. The rest of the ducks get a couple fish each but there is plenty of excitement. Kaine is usually in jail so only gets to participate occasionally. Greta, Noir and Pocahontas usually don't play.
- May 11, 2013
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Poor Kaine...I mean, he's a jerk so I don't feel TOO badly for him, but he just seems to be the problem child with you guys!
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Yeah. Yesterday he was behaving really well (all the ducks were kind of mellow - weird weather I think). So around 6:00pm I picked him up - he thought he was in trouble so he squirmed a bit and I sat him in my lap and fed him some worms and he calmed down. I scratched his chest and gave him some more worms. He mellowed right back out. I have to give him positive reinforcement after all and let him know we still love him...
I set him back down on the ground and he immediately ran into the pool and attacked Tevye
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