New Ducks!
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becks77
- A selfsufficientish Regular
- Posts: 1439
- Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2008 3:49 pm
- Location: Hailsham East Sussex
Re: New Ducks!
Aww Bonnie they are soooo luvly.
"no-one can make you feel inferior without your permission"
Re: New Ducks!
We've (semi) trained ours to go to bed when they're told. They'd rather sleep next to their pond (bottom half of a tortoise sandpit the local playgroup were going to throw away because it has no lid, so not quite as safe in the middle as they might think...) but if you say 'bed!' loudly as you heard them in they do get the message! They now start waddling towards the house as soon as I say it!
We have 2 Khaki Campbells and a white commercial hybrid. They are all lovely, but The KC's lay the most and being less...lowslung...find it easier to get in and out of the pond (they enjoy the water more too), get up the ramp to the house, escape under the gate into the garden...
I clean their pond out at least once a week but they do make it filthy again immediately, and they also get a good layer of silt in it each time from the mud on their feet, so that might be something to watch.
Mine aren't on grass unfortunately. They were, for about a month, but not any more. In the summer they are allowed on the lawn for a while, but our garden is so wet if they went on it in winter we'd end up with a swamp and no lawn. Ask me how I know this.
To make up for it they get chopped greens (lettuce, cleavers, chickweed, dandelions) in their water whenever I can and some grass cuttings to rootle through when we've cut the grass. I've tried them with other scraps, but apart from a bit of cooked rice they're not interested unless it's green!
We have 2 Khaki Campbells and a white commercial hybrid. They are all lovely, but The KC's lay the most and being less...lowslung...find it easier to get in and out of the pond (they enjoy the water more too), get up the ramp to the house, escape under the gate into the garden...
I clean their pond out at least once a week but they do make it filthy again immediately, and they also get a good layer of silt in it each time from the mud on their feet, so that might be something to watch.
Mine aren't on grass unfortunately. They were, for about a month, but not any more. In the summer they are allowed on the lawn for a while, but our garden is so wet if they went on it in winter we'd end up with a swamp and no lawn. Ask me how I know this.
To make up for it they get chopped greens (lettuce, cleavers, chickweed, dandelions) in their water whenever I can and some grass cuttings to rootle through when we've cut the grass. I've tried them with other scraps, but apart from a bit of cooked rice they're not interested unless it's green!
Re: New Ducks!
Just to re-emphasise,it really is worth putting something around the perimeter of your pond that they walk on rather than go straight from grass/soil/mud to pond,even a flat bit of wood is better than nothing,but the sort of stuff with holes in it that you wipe your feet on outside the back door and comes on a roll is cheap and ideal.If this means you clean the pond half as many times you've saved yourself a HELL of a lot of work.
Quick idea for would be duck keepers,I've seen a couple of rigid moulds for ornamental garden ponds in preloved/ebay pretty cheap,drill one edge for rope handle(for easy emptying),dig appropriate hole,quick cheap strong duckpond.
Quick idea for would be duck keepers,I've seen a couple of rigid moulds for ornamental garden ponds in preloved/ebay pretty cheap,drill one edge for rope handle(for easy emptying),dig appropriate hole,quick cheap strong duckpond.
Re: New Ducks!
A duck doormat! Brilliant!oldjerry wrote:Just to re-emphasise,it really is worth putting something around the perimeter of your pond that they walk on rather than go straight from grass/soil/mud to pond,even a flat bit of wood is better than nothing,but the sort of stuff with holes in it that you wipe your feet on outside the back door and comes on a roll is cheap and ideal.If this means you clean the pond half as many times you've saved yourself a HELL of a lot of work.
Quick idea for would be duck keepers,I've seen a couple of rigid moulds for ornamental garden ponds in preloved/ebay pretty cheap,drill one edge for rope handle(for easy emptying),dig appropriate hole,quick cheap strong duckpond.
HMK