Duck-keeping newbie needs advice turning a natural spring into a pond, plus two more

[lilclementine]

Hello everyone! My husband and I have been keeping chickens for the past year and have decided to add a couple of ducks to our home. We have some idea for housing (namely, the inexpensive plywood box idea), but my main question is about their swimming pool. We have two natural springs that run through our property. One of them starts in our yard and makes a 90 degree turn through a corner of a working cattle corral, then runs parallel to the house. Just after this corral there is a wide area of the spring that is pretty messy but could be turned into a pond. The second spring dumps here right at the end of the wide area. We were thinking that we could clean out this shallow area and create a small pond. The second spring would add a continuous stream of fresh water. The only possible problem I can see is that this is directly downstream from where the cattle drink. It isn't a high traffic area but for a couple of months out of the year (when they summer on the field by our house) it's where the cattle drink and, therefore, defecate. Is this a problem? Do you have any advice for us on turning a spring into a pond?

Two more questions for you as well: Will the ducks and chickens get along if they're in the same general area? And we have a lot of mosquitoes in this spring: will having ducks in the water when the mosquitoes breed help keep the bug population down?

Thank you so much in advance!

 

[rainplace]

My ducks love cow pies. They think those are the best things ever. The ducks I keep in the pasture, spend a lot of time at the manure pile. They also like to drink from any puddles that accumulate in the pastures during our wet sping/fall/winter. I wouldn't worry a bit.

 

[rainplace]

For some reason I only now saw your other questions. I keep chickens and ducks in the same area, but not in the same house. I have had feeding issues as the chickens don't want to let the ducks eat in the morning even though they have their own feeder inside their house. I solved this issue by staggering how I let them out in the morning. I feed the ducks before letting the chickens out.

Ducks love mosquito larva and will help keep the mosquito population down.

I don't know anything about how to turn a spring into a pond.