Erin Beth

Our family is thinking about putting in a pond, and my son (7) has a dream of raising ducks. I am looking for some good resources on how to design the pond, without having to spend all my time reading up on this! Could someone recommend a good book or website? We'd love to have fish in there too which I figure would be important for keeping it clean, and we'd need to know what flora and fauna can survive our long, cold winters.
Thanks!

Boredom does make sense.  We had a stretch of really nice warm days and the snow started to melt so they were able to venture a bit further from the coop and were happy.  Then it got cold and snowed again (as it should be here this time of year).  So I guess they just have spring fever like the rest of us.  Hopefully they'll stop doing it once spring is here for real?

Forgive me since I'm sure I'm not the first to ask this question but my search isn't turning up answers.
I know it'd be great to be feeding them sprouted grains and greens and all that lovely stuff but I'm just not there yet.  I have 8 hens and have them set up with pvc pipe feeders.  They are about 5 ft tall, 3 of them.  I'm feeding them layer pellets and it had been going just fine.  All of the sudden the last couple of weeks they are throwing all the food out all over the place and then once it's on the coop floor they don't seem to eat it.  Any idea what would cause them to start doing this?  Any ideas on how to get them to stop?  

Hi, I'm new here.  I hope I'm posting this question in the best location.
I live in the far north of VT, I've had some success with starting my seedlings on my windowsill but I'd really like to get them a more robust and healthy start.  My usual windowsill has a 12" wide ledge and fits two standard garden flats side by side; my idea is to build a shelf that will fit there so I can have two tiers of flats (4 total).  I decided to take a chance on ordering these lights: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LO55HJI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I'm not having a lot of luck finding information about using these, I think most people use them for growing marijuana so a lot of what is written is not applicable to me (trying to grow in enclosed spaces, trying to grow plants to maturity, etc).
So here are my questions:
1) I bought 2 3m sections, my shelf is going to be approximately 12" deep by 45" wide.  I figure I will snake them back and forth, and not connect them in any way but plug them in separately.  Will this be enough light?  Too much?
2) I saw somewhere that someone attached these to an aluminum bar to dissipate the heat.  I thought one of the advantages of LED is that the don't generate much heat?  Do I really need to do this?
3) Any other thoughts or warnings for me?

Thanks in advance!