Our Ducks HATE the New POND - Building a Duck Pond

My ducks hate my new pond. Come on ducks, go in the water. Oh no. Morning folks, Chad here. Welcome back to the farm. I'm gonna just get the cats going and get the chickens out. So we're gonna beautify this pond a little bit today. I have some tweaking to do and as it gets filled it only needs about that much more and it's full. I gotta tune the waterfalls, make sure that that's okay. There's all the cats waiting for me. Hi guys. You guys want to come out? Of course, I know you do. I know you do. Okay. Mango, you okay buddy? Dexter, I see you there bud. You're looking for mice already, huh? Fuzzy, you're coming out too bud. Where were you? You're always the last one out. You're not coming out. Fuzzy, let's go. Tango. Hey Tango. How are you? You okay? How are you buddy? Dexter here is always my best bud. Always. Him and Fuzzy. Chunk's coming along too. Look at his eyes. He's so comfortable with me. Even I'm picking him up and holding him like this, you know. He's fine. If we can get this pond acceptable for the ducks and geese to get into it today. We'll see if they'll even walk right in or if I have to coax them in. It's getting full, so I'm gonna start playing around. Come on water. There it is. It's filling up. It's not level though. I'm gonna have to level this thing off. There she goes. It's gonna pool up right there. See I'm worried about right here. See this needs to be up a bit. Because look, it's all coming out. Oh no. I need to lift this up more. That side's okay, but this is no good. I got a little bit of a leak down there too. See the drip drip? So I gotta tighten up that ring there. I got those boxwood plants there. I'm gonna plant that around the pond. Look at Olive. Dexter's just watching her like she's a crazy person. Okay, it's starting to get full all around the edges there. I got a few inches, but right there it's about, I don't know, two inches from the top. So that's probably right where I want it. I want to get some flat stones right here so that when the ducks and the geese are in the water they can just swim over here and climb onto the rocks. Ozzie, I see you. You come to say hi, bud? You come to say hi? Good boy. Really I'm trying to see if I can prevent them from climbing up elsewhere because their claws, especially the geese, they might puncture the liner. The liner is very thick. It's like a thick rubber liner, but I don't want to take any chances. I decided to buy a couple of these boxwood shrubs. They only grow to about three or four feet and they keep their leaves all year long. So it's like an evergreen bush and I don't really want something that's going to grow really tall because this is in the orchard. You know what I mean? Look at Dexter. What are you doing, buddy? You're getting all dusty. I hear you crying. Where's all the crew? Some people were asking me how come I decided to use this rubber liner and the reason is this. This is the soil that was in the bottom of the pond and you can see it's really like sand. It's almost like beach sand. Look at it. See once it gets dry, it's hydrophobic. You see that? So if I didn't use a liner, it wouldn't hold water. You'd have to bring in some sort of clay substance. A lot of people refer to it as bentonite or blue clay and I mean that gets expensive too. You need to put like a real real thick layer and you can't build a pond like this with steep edgings like that. Like with a wall flat like that. It has to be a pond that's like a gradual slope because you're going to have to get this bentonite tamped and squished into the soil. So I didn't build it like that. I built this with some ledges. You know like I can put a potted plant in there that's like an aquatic plant and that will help with aeration and filtration too. Okay let's try to figure out these leaks. I think I solved that problem and then I want to get the water running and we'll see if I need to tighten up that connection. I think I solved this problem. I fixed it there. I raised this up higher. That's not bad. I built this little deck type thing so that the geese and the ducks won't be able to exit the water from this whole side here. I'm worried about them puncturing the liner and what I'm doing is just making a little lip with the liner. I'm screwing it to the boards and then basically to prevent any mud and soil runoff into the pond when it's raining. There's Dexter coming to keep me company. Hi Dexter. How you doing bro? Coming to check out the pond eh? Don't you fall in. You'll get all wet and cold. There's Molly. There's Olive and Dexter checking out the waterfalls. Oh you can't see his face. There he is. He's investigating. I just picked up three ornamental grasses. They only grow to about two meters tall and they're a perennial so I'm not going to have to replant every year. I think it's going to look really good around the pond. Make it look a little bit more natural. It's not a hundred percent done. I still have more beautifying to do and I'll be getting a bunch more plants once the garden center has a lot wider variety but I got the falls running because I want to make sure obviously that the ducks know that that's where the water is and I think I'm going to take away their water bins. Let me go get these ducks and I'll get the geese and then it's showtime. You guys coming out? There you go. Well let's see if the ducks can find the water by themselves. I can see they're all kind of waiting right there by the water. Come on ducks you got a new pond. Well that settles it. They may need a little coaxing to come over into the water. They're so accustomed to swimming in those little bins. They went straight for the bins. The geese are going for the grass right away but the ducks maybe they just need time to find it. Where are you guys going? The pond's over there. Olive they don't know where the pond is. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? I just need one or two of you guys to go in and then all the ducks will follow. That one's sticking his head way down there. They found the water those geese because the geese are much smarter than the ducks. Where's that one going? Oh no look what they're doing to my grass. I told you it would be interesting if these ducks and geese will go in on their own or if they need training. They laid an egg right here. One duck egg. Where are you guys going? See that's what I was afraid of. They're right on that liner right there and they're gonna start sinking in the soil making mud. This is what I didn't want but you can't plan for everything. As much planning as I have you can't plan for everything. He went in. They're in. The geese are in the pond. I think what I need to do is make a fence here and then a little fence over there. A temporary fence to stop them from coming around this way because I need to plant grass here or something to stop them. See look they're able to get out right there. That was perfect. That was perfect. That's exactly what I wanted. I want them to go in and out right there and then their wet feet can go on these gravels. You know if they go over here with the wet feet this is going to turn to muck and then if they go back in it'll turn the water to muck. I can tell they're loving it. Look they're all getting out right there. They're going to get their feet all muddy and then they're going to want to go back in again because guess what swimming in this pond is going to be too much fun for these ducks and geese. The ducks however not so much. They haven't figured it out yet. I told you geese are much smarter than ducks. Ducks are fun. They're cute. They're lovable but they're not as smart as geese. Don't go in over there. You're all muddy. Look at you. You're all muddy. Well I'm going to leave them alone for a while and I'm going to go and figure out some kind of a barrier so that they'll have a hard time getting in and out on this side because that's going to get ruined really quickly. I like that though that they got in and out with that. Trial and error though guys right like I never have any experience building a duck pond for actual ducks. Yes I've built a pond in one of my previous homes. It was just a little 10 foot pond and we had a whole bunch of little koi and comet goldfish in there but that's about it. This is like much bigger. This is 16 feet by 11 feet and it's approximately four feet deep. I don't know. I think it's working pretty good so far but I'm going to disappear and then we'll see if we can catch the ducks swimming in here after I'm gone. While I had the excavator here I tried to level this off. It's in a tight quarters though. I'm going to have to get the rake and kind of level it but what happens is every winter because this is slightly downhill all the snow and the ice build up and then when I walk in here to water the geese I slide. So I'm trying to make this little landing level so it'll be a lot better now that that's flat. Ducks you haven't figured it out yet? Come on ducks. Maybe this shouldn't be called a duck pond. It should be called a goose pond because the ducks look like they're lined up ready to go to bed and it's like noon. Geese are loving it though. Okay well I must say this is just a little anticlimactic. You know what I mean? Because the ducks are not going in their new pond. I don't even know what to do about it. How do you train ducks to go in a pond? The geese have somewhat figured it out. The ducks are just... it's like they're not interested. What do I do? Throw them in? But then I got to chase them down to get them. The ducks are still not going in. I think this confirms it. My ducks hate my new pond. They hate it. It's been all day and they haven't gone in. I don't know. They must be thirsty. They must be wanting to preen themselves and clean themselves. Don't they? Not interested. They hate my pond. Maybe they hate the design of my pond. The geese are okay. The pond looks nice. Where do you guys think you're going? You stay there. You stay there. Stay. Okay let me try this. I put the geese away so they won't bother me and I'll try to just herd the ducks to see if they'll go in the water. If they don't then that's the end of the video guys because I can't force my ducks to get in there. All I know is I'm having fun. If you're not having fun I don't know what more I can do. Come on ducks go in the water. No? I really tried to show you the ducks swimming in the pond for the first time people. I can't stay here like literally all day all night trying to get footage of the ducks. They're not going in. So I guess this may be a process. I really didn't expect it. I thought it might be difficult to get them in. But what am I supposed to do now? How can I train them that this is a beautiful pond? You'd think that they would just find it. They've been out in this orchard today for about seven hours. Because when was it? It was like 11 o'clock when I finished the pond and I let them out. And now it's like six o'clock. And I mean I got to go home and I got to edit the video. You know what I mean? The pond's looking beautiful. The ducks are being uncooperative and they hate my pond. Olive you're going to help me herd the ducks? Let's go. We got to take it wide. We got to go wide. Slowly. Okay. Slowly. Don't force them. Just slowly. Okay. Anyway people you had a lot of good footage of the geese having fun in the pond. And I mean I've been calling it a duck pond. But I should really call it a goose pond. The ducks didn't even enjoy it. It's not even dirty. That's good. I mean they've only been in for a few hours. But I'm relatively satisfied. It looks decent. I still have some prettying up to do. Like this whole area I'm going to level it a bit and plant grass seed. But it's a little bit too cold at night to do that. So that's coming. I'm going to plant all grass seed here to to fix the orchard. Because this is the orchard guys. This pond is like in a section where I don't have any trees. So it's an orchard pond for our orchard ducks and our guard geese. Anyways we'll get some footage eventually of these ducks in the pond. I feel a little bit disappointed and inadequate. But what am I going to do? I'm going to try to use a net and get the duck and throw them in there. Oh gosh. See you on the next episode folks. Hope you had fun.