Experienced poultry farmers note that ducks and their offspring grow healthy and quickly gain weight, swimming in a spacious body of water, and not in a trough or puddle. If there is no natural reservoir near the places where they are kept, an artificial one can be built. Creating a pool for ducks yourself, with your own hands, is not as difficult a task as it might seem at first glance.
What is a duck pool for?
The main task of the duck pool is to ensure the rapid growth of the bird and maintain its immunity. Without water, waterfowl experience discomfort and health problems.
Young duck offspring bathe for the first time:
Waterfowl, ducks, which have the ability to swim even in a small pond, provide owners with higher quality meat. Poultry that grows without a pond at home has excess fatty layers in the meat, and this negatively affects its taste.
The benefit of a pond is that it reduces feed costs. Ducks supplement their diet with aquatic vegetation (duckweed), aquatic insects, and small fish. The pond also solves another problem - a drinking bowl.
What will be needed for construction
Before constructing a bird pool, it is necessary to carry out certain excavation work - digging a hole the size of the future artificial pond. For ducks, a pond with a depth of about half a meter is preferable. In such a pool, the water warms up faster, which will allow small ducklings to live there without any problems.
Moreover, if you fill the water surface with duckweed, waterfowl will receive additional green food. However, we must remember that ducks pollute water quickly, and if it is not replaced, it will bloom, turning into a stinking puddle.
Those who cannot reach groundwater should use waterproofing when installing a pool. As a rule, these are ordinary PVC or special (butyl rubber) films.
The latter are easy to purchase. Sold in rolls. The main goal is to create artificial reservoirs. This waterproofing is safe and does not harm nature or the ecosystem. Tolerates both low and high temperatures, having a high service life of 10 years or more.
Pool area
One of the main requirements for a duck pool is that it should not be a swamp. To prevent water from turning into a dirty, foul-smelling slurry, the water must be circulated and filtered.
The most preferable position is for the poultry farmer whose area has a lowland. There, the groundwater lies shallow, at a level of 1.5-2 m. In this case, an hour of work by a hired excavator allows you to find a pit that will instantly turn into a small lake.
However, we must remember that over time the water will erode the banks, the artificial pond will become larger and shallower.
In order to create a duck pond yourself, you should initially take care of choosing a location. Usually, for this purpose, an area is chosen in the corners of the land plot, with the presence of natural depressions (pits, beams, ravines).
Drawings and materials
Capital duck pools, which require financial costs, are built for waterfowl whose population exceeds 100 pieces. For reference, a pool measuring 7 by 7 m satisfies the needs of about 300 ducks. Larger ones are considered unprofitable, since the costs of their construction take a long time to pay off. Usually, a large reservoir is entrusted to construction by specialists who can work according to drawings and diagrams. One example could be a reservoir built according to the drawing below.
A duck pool must be equipped with a drainage system. To carry out excavation work, special equipment is used, a concrete mixer or ready-made concrete. It is estimated that a pool with a diameter of 6 m or more will pay for itself in 4-5 years. But the costs of its construction can be afforded by farms that routinely breed ducks.
Work on creating a permanent reservoir for waterfowl begins with the selection of a site and the preparation of design documentation.
Next, a pit is dug, a trench for the drainage system and the drainage pit itself. The volume of the latter should be the same or larger than that of the reservoir being created. Determining its place is also important. It must be done with greater depth.
The excavated soil should be removed as far as possible. If you leave it nearby, the ducks will start swarming in it, turning the surrounding area into a swamp. Metal reinforcement and stones are laid around the perimeter of the pit. The bottom of the artificial pond is concreted.
Concrete walls are erected using formwork and reinforcement. After drying, they are treated with a special primer to prevent leaks and ensure a long service life.
The edges of the pool are sealed in such a way that birds do not damage them.
An example of creating a permanent pool for waterfowl:
How to make a duck pool with your own hands
Poultry farmers who own a small number of ducks usually use homemade ponds. Without any problems, you can also buy a plastic bathing container, which is placed in a dug hole and then strengthened.
A drawing of one of these artificial reservoirs is given below.
There are many options for homemade ponds. Often there are dug holes made of film, slate, ground stone.
For those who do not want to burden themselves with any work on an artificial reservoir, a bathtub, trough, and other household containers will be useful.
An example of creating a bird pond with your own hands:
The principles laid down in a homemade duck pond are few, but they must be taken into account.
Thus, one flat bank should be provided so that the bird can enter the water unhindered.
It is necessary to create conditions for water retention in the pool. If the soil is sandy or otherwise freely permeable to water, and there is no waterproofing, systematic addition of liquid is required. To reduce its evaporation, you can create a canopy or choose a place with natural shade.
The bottom of the duck pond is covered with clay 10 to 15 cm thick, which is compacted. Then a 10-15 cm layer of pressed sand is poured on top.
However, it is most rational to use waterproofing materials. They are laid at the bottom of the pit. A budget option is a thick polyethylene film laid in 2 layers. Its edges exposed to the surface are reinforced with stones. And the film covering lying on the bottom is covered with soil (sand) so that the ducks do not tear it with their paws.
