Well, when the leaves or anything else goes into your pond, it starts to decompose. This causes the ammonia, nitrate and nitrite levels to possibly sky rocket and any beneficial bacteria that may have taken up residence would be killed from the ammonia spike and subsequently cause another spike. My guess is the geese know when water is toxic and not safe to drink. That's just my $0.02 based on my knowledge with closed water ecosystems. I don't have any waterfowl (yet God willing) so can't base it on this specific example but I think the concepts crossover pretty well. Also, once all that dead material falls to the bottom of the pond it causes a build up of sulfuric gasses just under the surface of bottom and if stirred up can be released into the water. I hope my science is right here its been a while since I've dealt with water quality problems. Someone please correct me if I'm mistakenOur pond needs some serious work (at least thats what I think). It was dug in 2003 by the builders when they were elevating the grounds of what would become our house. Over time it has kind of filled in. I would describe it as bowl shaped, with the deepest part in the middle being maybe 4 feet? It cant be very deep seeing as it dries up every winter, and overflows in the summer. Its located near the back of our property. Here's the view from the goose coopThose bush looking things are some kind of tree/ shrub. The majority of their leaves fall into the pond and I think thats what makes the water look so dark (maybe that scares my geese?) Here's a closer view
Here's a view from the back
and, see all the vegetation growing in the middle of the pond? That might be another sign that its not deep enough
And from the side
Do your ponds dry up at all? (and maybe you can throw in another Pom pic to keep this on the thread topic
)
or
My gander went after a racoon this morning and this is what happened.
