Getting ready to build a duck pond....

[angeliduck]

Woah that looks awesome!! I hope one day I can build my duckies their very own awesome pond

 

[Mvpitzki]

Any update on your pond?

 

[Jayzandra]

Yes, but I'm at work right now. I will update when i get home.

 

[Mvpitzki]

Sounds great

 

[Jayzandra]

OK, so after much trial and error, we decided to cement the waterfall. The silicone just didn't want to stick to the plastic tubing. We live in the desert so water evaporates quickly, even in cool weather, so we had to figure out the right amount of trickle from the inlet hose to keep water flowing into the skimmer without it OVERflowing. Once we got all that figured out we purchased some water plants and threw them in there, along with a few feeder fish (we'll take them out later, we're thinking no fish). I planted some cattails, rushes, and various grasses in little organic planters and put them along the edge, which I blocked on either side with chicken wire to keep the chickens away. I also ordered some lotus, but they haven't arrived yet. My babies arrive on the 19th and hopefully by the time they can join the flock the plants will be well established. The past few days I've been focusing on my vegetable garden and haven't worked on getting the plants planted into the stream yet because I don't feel like messing with the wire tunnel yet. Ahhh, this is definitely a lot of work!

There are some small river rocks that go here to cover the liner, we just haven't put them back yet.

It's had to get a good picture of the water flowing. After building and rebuilding, we just ran out of energy to put all the rocks back into place. :/

I don't know if you can see the row of planters along the right hand edge, behind the chicken wire. Once they start growing well I will arrange them better. we may also widen the stream a little.

You can see the skimmer (blue bucket) here and the bare root fruit trees we planted. This will look so much better after everything starts growing and turning green. We also have more large rocks to put around the edge of the entire pond.

You can see some of the water plants here. We have a large piece of flagstone to sit on top of the skimmer to hide it.

It did get settle and clear up eventually.

 

[CrazyChookLady5]

hi everyone, i thought i'd join in
i'm getting ducks soon and kinda wondering what to do for their pond and i think i'll do something like this, with out the waterfall part, i'm thinking of lining the pond with some kind of tarp, then putting dird and rocks in the bottem so i can put water plants in it, but i don't really want a filter so im not sure if that'll work, but i'll figure it out!
hope your pond goes well!!

 

[LaurelC]

That pond looks great!

 

[Mvpitzki]

Wow, looks incredible. I'm going to follow your blue print when i build my ducks pond this summer. Please keep us updated on how it turns out

 

[veronicasmom]

Chloe Adler-if you don't have a filtration system in a pond, it will get filthy faster than you can imagine. Ducks are so great but they make A HUGE MESS of anything they are in. Trust me. If you don't want to go the whole route of filtering the pond to keep it clean, get kiddie pools that you can either drain or dump daily.

Jayzandra-very nice. I am envious.

 

[Jayzandra]

OK, so the goslings kept trying to eat the chicks, so we did a test run and put them in with the adult chickens, just to see how things went. They don't even care! Why is that? Why do the adult chicken want to kill baby chickens but not baby ducks, geese and turkeys?

So anyway, we put a heat lamp in the coop for the babies and just left them in with the chickens. Now everyone is safe and happy. Meanwhile, the ducklings and goslings have done a number on the pond. The ate all the under water plants and like to sift though the mud. So obviously this pond is way to small to keep it looking all beautiful.

Well, I got part of my garden planted and attached the garden hose to waterfall outlet to water it. I just drained the whole pond into the garden and refilled it with fresh, clean water. So, even though it's not pretty, the system works.

I have good fertilized water for the garden and a big enough pond for the birds to play in. My favorite thing is when the dive under the water.

Silly birds!