A Look at the Duck Pond After 3 Months

In today's episode, we're going to hang out with the ducks and the geese in the orchard. We're going to do a little bit of pond maintenance on the new duck pond and have some nice discussions around weeding and pasture grass and flora and fauna. So stay tuned and enjoy the show. For those who are new to the channel, we raise ducks out in our orchard and they eat all the insects for us and fertilize the area of course. We have a few guard geese that protect the ducks from small predators and maybe aerial predators and whatnot and they also eat the grass so it's kind of a win-win situation for everybody. It's almost like they're working animals for us because they do have a job and it's also nice to watch them in the orchard. I built this pond for them last spring and it's been an adventure ever since. It started out of course perfectly clear and as time went on it got a bunch of algae and it's looking awfully greeny today. I don't think it's ready to be drained and refilled with fresh water yet. I'll probably end up doing that at the end of the summer. It does need a little bit of maintenance so we're going to get this filter cleaned out today. I'm going to show you the 2500 by Aquascape and we're going to get some skimming done and we get to watch the ducks in the orchard and in the pond. So let's have some fun. There's always something to be done on the farm and today's no exception. I've been meaning to get some of this stuff done out in the mini orchard for a couple of weeks now and I'm definitely getting it done today. We have this temporary netting that I put up, I don't know, a month and a half ago maybe and I put that up to keep the ducks and the geese away from this little area right here because I planted fresh grass seed. I booked a little barren after building this little duck pond. I wanted to get some grass seed in there. It's thick enough now that I can mow it and give access to the ducks and the geese and they'll just eat it and poop on it and help regenerating this little area that didn't look that good after the pond build. There is in fact a special way that you need to remove this poultry netting because it can get quite cumbersome and easily tangled and when you put it away for storage, you know, you have to make sure you're storing it correctly so that the next time you want to use it, it's easy. Look at that little guy. Flora and fauna in this pond already. Well, as far as I'm concerned, if there's frogs, then it means our pond is well on its way to being a decent enough ecosystem. Maybe it'd be nice if we had a little bit less algae but maybe the frogs eat the algae. Maybe the ducks eat the algae. So, I don't know. I think it's okay. There's another one there and there's another one right there. A little tiny one. Check it out. I wonder if the ducks will eat small tiny frogs. That's an interesting concept. I'm not sure about that. We're in the filter. You see the frog? Let's see how many duck eggs we have today in the ducky funky. Right, Olive? You want some eggs? It's so small. Duck eggs are supposed to be bigger. Did you see any more eggs? Oh, what have we got right here? There's one. See? A little bit dirty. Okay, Olive. We only have three duck eggs. Ready to go? Now, you got to think back to when I built this thing. This pond is just like a man-made pond. It's not a natural pond. It's not fed by a natural spring. I filled this up with our well water. I have not topped it up yet this year. If you look closely to the other end there, you'll see that the water is maybe two or three inches down right now because it used to be up at those rocks. But that's just because we've had an awful lot of rain water. And, you know, the rain water will just naturally fill this up. Now, we don't have water runoff from here to here because I put some blockages right here. The water can't get in because I don't want muddy water really. I want to prevent that. But the rain that did come just goes in there naturally. We haven't had rain in a little while yet so the water is evaporating slightly. The water doesn't have any kind of an odor and I've put the water right up to my nose and I don't smell anything out of the ordinary. It just smells like pond water, you know, like natural water. So although the water is looking green, I honestly think it's just algae. I really don't think the water's dirty per se, you know. I don't know what some of those things are. Maybe some kind of a water lice or there's just hundreds of different kind of insects probably. A lot of people have been asking me about the filter area here. So let me take it apart and I'll show you. This is not a created filter by myself. This is just a purchased filter. This is some kind of a cover that goes on it. There's all these bags and inside the bag is bio-medium. You need this. You don't really clean this too much because you want all that bacteria in there because it's a good bacteria. But these things need to get cleaned because they're clogged. See how they're all clogged up? All of this slime needs to get out of there. So we need to hose that down and get it clean. There's two of them in there. This is what it looks like when it's free of all that collection. So it's pretty brand new again once you rinse it off and clean it. So you see all this greeny water that's coming out of the filter. There's a bunch of sludge build up on the filter. That's why I'm hosing it down to get all the sludge off. I believe you really don't want to completely, completely clean everything because you want that beneficial bacteria that's inside the filter. But you want to get rid of all the sludge and the particles and whatnot. But in the future I do plan on harvesting this water. All it would need really is a very basic pump to just pump the water from the pond into whatever I want to water in the garden. I don't know if you need to do that when you have something growing like some kind of veggies growing or if you can just do it at any time. Can I do it at the end of the season where you're just putting the water into the bed in the soil and all of that beneficial fertilizer will just go into the soil for your plantation next year. I really don't think you're supposed to clean up all this stuff. Like it's all there's that greeny algae stuff building up around the edges. And I'm gonna get it all put back together. And I don't think it has any effect on how clear the pond water is. I think it just has an effect of clearing out some debris and helping the beneficial bacteria. This is an Aquascape 2500 waterfall filter. And there is a special cover that you can get for it. It's I don't know 150 dollars. I just couldn't find it in stock when I ordered this. But it's like a fake looking rock that kind of covers it. But it's fine. The ducks like to swim in there. And you saw earlier the frog was in there. So it's all good. A lot of people have suggested that I put some plants in here to help with the filtration. The fear that I have is I'm going to go and spend a boatload of money buying some plants. And the ducks are just going to ruin them. And the geese especially too because the geese are biting at everything. But the only real spot that I have to put plants here is along that edge right there. And I guess you'd have to put them in some kind of a water pot. And then it would grow you know out of the water. There's always a chance that the ducks are going knock that over and then the pot will sink down to the four foot level. But there's also that little spot right there behind that log where there's like that's a ledge. I could actually put some potted plants back there. But like I said I kind of think that they might just ruin it all. And aquatic plants are expensive. And another thing is fish. There may be an opportunity to add some kind of feeder fish like maybe some baby minnows. But really that would be something that would just be food for the ducks. I see the ducks diving in all the time. So that's always a possibility. I just hadn't had a chance to get that done. Overwintering any kind of fish in this kind of a pond gets a little bit complicated. It basically means that you cannot allow this to completely freeze over. The fish will die. You need like a like a bubbler or a pond heater that would keep a little hole. And I guess that allows gases to escape. My understanding anyway, correct me if I'm wrong, but in between the surface of the water and the underside edge of the ice you're going to get gases coming up out of the water in that little space between the water and the ice. And then the fish will come up and kind of get some air and they're breathing in all those gases. So the fish will die. That's my understanding anyways. So just keep in mind. I have a lot to learn about this, but that's what I'm sticking to right now. It is in fact deep enough to have fish over the winter because it is four feet deep. And here in our area of Ontario where we're zone 5b, you need three feet of water underneath because you're going to get at least one foot of ice. So thinking about it in that respect, if you wanted to have an 18 inch deep pond, you can't have fish over the winter because it's going to turn into a solid block of ice with no water left. I think all this grass turned out pretty good. Doesn't look too shabby. It kind of blends into the pasture area here. But I do have this little mound right here and I'm not able to cut that with my riding mower. But I may have to figure out a way to use a snipper or I might just in fact leave this whole area. See this Artemisia even grows from way down there. How does it grow in there? There's like no soil there. Mother nature finds a way I tell you. This wild Artemisia all around the pond has become the bane of my existence. It's my own fault for letting it grow this tall because it's actually over six foot in some areas, which is taller than I am. But it grows through the rhizomes in the root system and it's extremely difficult to eliminate and eradicate. And it is slightly going to seed right now. If I shake it, there's kind of a pollen dust that's falling off of it. So my allergies are acting up today. I've been trying to eliminate this in our garden and out here in the pond area and it's very difficult. I like the Artemisia because the rabbits eat the Artemisia, but I don't want it right here. And I don't want it in the garden. So this needs to go. Now this thing grows, like look at this thing. It's taller than me. And this thing travels by the roots. You see this big clumpy root system here? I've been trying to knock off all the soil that I can, but really it's a big chunk of roots. Now don't forget, I put fresh soil in here too. But I need to eliminate all this, pull it out, just deal with it and maybe burn it. The rabbits can't eat that quantity and I definitely don't want to spread the seeds around the farm. Now I usually can't pull this stuff out by the root when it's in the pasture grass. But this soil right here, I just put it brand new when I built the pond. So it's still a bit loose and I'm able to just yank it and kind of knock off all the soil. Seems to be working okay. But it's a lot of work on a hot day. See the nice garden phlox flowers are getting strangled by all these other Artemisia plants. Look what I found. I'm just cutting back this Artemisia stuff. You can see how rigid it is. Like I can't pull this out. It's like a wood. See? It's really like a strong wood. But look at that. Some ducks made a little nest in there. It's too funny these ducks. I don't know how I'm going to get rid of this stuff. I'll probably just let it grow and keep cutting it out because I can't pull it out. It won't pull out. Hopefully that lessens the burden. Not looking too shabby now. I can start watering all these plants again to get them rejuvenated. Got some nice garden phlox here. Got some spirea. Oh boy, that was a lot of work. Really a lot of work. I'm tired. I'm sweaty. But it looks a lot better, don't you think? It's so nice if it can maintain like this. I'm going to keep an eye on all those Artemisia weeds and see if they're starting to regrow again and try to get them out while they're still young because those things are taller than me and I'm six foot three. You want to play kong? Here, you want to play kong? You're going to have a rest here? I got to go do some work. You stay here, okay? It's too hot today, okay? Good girl. At least now the ornamental grass is exposed. The sedum is exposed. You can see the creeping jenny down in there. See the creeping jenny? We got some creeping phlox. More creeping jenny. And then, of course, this nice phlox here. But it's very small. It should be like a big shrub. So I'm happy I was able to get all this cleared out of there. It's been great to be able to get some time to examine this pond after a few months. We built this back in the spring. We did a lot of weeding today. We got a lot of good footage of the ducks and the geese in their element. And I think overall it was a successful update on this pond. And for anybody who's been having any questions as to how it's doing, I think it's doing great. I think it has a lot of potential. It has a lot of good bacteria. It has a lot of good little insects. It's getting frogs. It's getting dragonflies. Those are all great things, in my opinion, that says the pond is well on its way to being a good, balanced ecosystem. Toodle-oo-ga-na, ducks. Toodle-oo-ga-na. Time to go to bed. Yeah, you guys. Time to go to bed. Toodle-oo-ga-na. And since you love ducks and geese so much, I have another video. It's up on the screen now. Give it a click and it's going to explain our entire free-range duck and goose system in our orchard.