Safe pond idea for the duckies AND the kids?

[cozycritters]

My DH and I have been wanting to make a pond for our ducks and goose-- right now we have a sort of glorified mud puddle, but my big concern is that we're going to have a new baby in August, and, though I am extremely attentive, I know how quickly kids and water can spell disaster, so I'm worried about how to make it safe for the baby, yet accessible to the animals.

We're literally *backyard* homesteaders, so we're not talking about even an acre to work with... the ducks and goose have full access to the whole yard at all times and currently spend their time swimming in their water bowl and in the giant mud puddle.

Any tricks for keeping things safe?

 

[Dances with Ducks]

My thought is you might not want your baby/toddler crawling around where the poultry poops anyway. So better to keep the ducks, geese and pool on one side of a fence, and your baby on the other. You can remove the fence when you feel your child is old enough to be around the pool.
We put up a long stretch of low picket fencing with some cute homemade gates so we could keep the ducks out of our vegetable plots.

 

[Andora]

We used green wire fencing with green metal poles (like the kind you would see on a farm, just not plain metal) and sectioned off about 1/4th of our backyard for a big duck and chicken pen. That way they only come out if we open the gate, and there isn't poop all over our backyard. My toddler knows now she has to wear shoes in the pen, but we can still enjoy going barefoot around the yard, and my birds get to free range in a fairly large pen! Sometimes we let them out to roam the yard, but usually I try to time it before it's getting ready to rain so all the poop is washed away.