Topic: The Ducks have found the Big Pond

[Palustris]

They are actually standing on the water, the ice has just sunk about 2 inches for them.

[teresa]

Oh Eric

Dont they look happy a lovely photo so when are you going to get more lady ducks to ballance things out 2 to 1 bit unfair. Or are you going to give her pep pills hee hee.
Teresa

[Palustris]

Spring, we will look for another female, but they are normally only sold in pairs, so it might be difficult. It takes two if us to get them to leave the pond at night for their pen. They would get eaten by the foxes if we left them out.

[teresa]

Not easy convincing them to move out of the pond they have just found. :'(
Need to train them Army style: with whistle :D
One blow for exit pond,
Two for march to pen,
Three for enter pen and a forth for bring up the drawbridge.
Well just a thought, they are too pretty to be a foxes dinner.
Get training Teresa

[Palustris]

No such organisation needed, we just walk behind them with the yard brush. They are used to it, the breeder used one to guide them from hatching. Trouble is they tend to swim to the middle of the pont just out of reach of the brush (the pond is 12 feet by 8 feet) so we have to use two brushes to get them started. Quite funny to watch really.

[Hyacinth]

Lovely pic, Eric - are the ponds natural, btw?

[Palustris]

No, dug em out with my own fair hand (and a spade). The big one is 4m by 3m and 1m deep in the middle and shelves to nothing. It would have been bigger, but the only direction for expansion is blocked by a piece of corrugated iron, vertical in the ground and try as I might I could not get down deep enough to remove it. The other pond is 2m by 1m and about 75cm deep. The lily pond is 2,5m square and again about a metre deep, but the ducks could not get in there as it is raised up about  25cm above ground level.

[Hyacinth]

...begs the question then, Eric - what did you do with the spoil? Most ponds I see are, surprise! surprise! surrounded by rockeries  ::)

Friend had a daub-&-wattle house in Glos, called 'Duckpool Cottage' & the previous owners had left a 1930s (or something) framed mag. cutting 'Our Beautiful Heritage' with a pic of DC - with duckpond in the front bit...long gone..

SO we excavated a pond, but in the end hired in a dinky tractor-thingy with attachments, so that we could cart all this soil away to another part of the grounds...

then we borrowed an incubator and did the night-shift watching chucks & ducklings hatch ....ahhhhh...

Happy Days ;D

[Hugh_Jones]

LUNCH

[Mrs Ava]

Hugh!   :o

....ahem...just what I was thinking!   :P

[Palustris]

By the lady expensive lunch at £17 per pair.