waterproofing a pond with Muscovy ducks

Hey Permies,

I have built a pond that I would like to waterproof with ducks, south west of France, and I would like your advice on a few points.

I am about to buy a few Muscovy ducks (Cairina moschata), maybe 3 or 4. I am planning on building them a little shelter and surrounding them with an electric fence. There is no water in the pond yet because the soil is sandy.

What should I feed the ducks (will kitchen scraps from a family of 3 be enough) ?
What kind of electric fence should I use (voltage, joules, height, etc) ?
At the beginning there will be no water in the pond, should I put a pan filled with water so they can bath ?
Do you know a design for a small duck's house ?
Any other recommandation is welcome !

Thank you !

Hi there!

I have muscovy ducks, and can answer some of these questions!
Are you planning on doing anything else to the sandy 'pond' to seal it and capture rainwater, or what's your plan there? Muscovies poop a lot, but I reckon it would take a long time to line an entire pond, especially with 3-4 ducks!
A shelter is good, they don't need much. I've found them to be pretty sturdy ducks. I think my climate is colder/wetter than yours and they do all right here in a little shed with just straw on the floor. They don't like the snow, but I don't think many ducks do!

I feed mine a brand of bird feed called 'all flock' - just a broad-spectrum bird feed that they really love. I guess it depends how much kitchen scraps you produce, but I'd keep a bag of commercial food (or however you can get grain) on hand to feed them if your family doesn't produce enough for them. It could be hard to tell on adults, but I have a sense of how fast they should grow now after a couple years of having them, so I can tell when to increase their food as they go from chicks to adults. Keep an eye on how much they seem to successfully forage in your area as well. Your pond looks pretty dry right now, but normally they'll forage through grass and clover and bugs. Mine dig around in the muck at the bottom of the pond, I have no idea what they find to eat down there! As for kitchen scraps, I've seen my ducks eat just about everything even remotely resembling food. They will probably surprise you lol. Chicken bones, peach pits, every kind of fruit and vegetable skin, they eat EVERYTHING. I don't compost anything, the ducks get it all and put it in the pond haha!

My neighbor has a nice electric fence that is a flexible net-type thing, on movable posts, so he can move the fence around for his sheep. That would probably be great for them, especially as you get a feel for what they like to do on your property. You might be moving them around a lot as you get them settled, so a mobile fence would be convenient. I don't know what it's called, but you're in France, too, so you and Google will have to have a chat to see what's available!

There are also two sort of kinds of muscovies, there's a breed that's been very domesticated, and usually comes in white/brown coloration, and more wild ones that are typically variations of black. The white/brown ones are slow and heavy and don't fly well. The black ones however are pretty spry, and without a net covering over their area they'll likely be able to escape pretty easily, especially if there's more forage outside the fenced area! I let mine free-range, and with a pond available to them to jump onto, the predators have only caught a few. They reproduce really well so I've been able to keep the flock going. I'm currently mixing white/brown genetics with the black ones to see if I can get fat and spry ducks! Anyway, if you're feeding them, they likely won't have a good reason to escape, so the fence is mostly to keep predators away, if you think that will be a problem in your area. My ducks are really friendly, and follow me into the shed every night to get locked up so they don't get eaten while they're asleep.

You should definitely keep water out for them! Ducks have pretty delicate sinuses that need to be kept wet all the time. They also like to wash down all their food with water, and splash and bathe themselves constantly. People without a pond usually keep a 'kiddie pool' full of water for the ducks - it's like a big plastic pan, maybe 2 meters across and 30cm deep. They'll turn it to mud in a day or so, so you'll have to refill it every day probably. Ducks are really dirty!

I got lucky and my property had a little boat shed on edge of the pond that I use to keep them in at night. I feed them to get them in it at night, so I give them a big bowl of water to drink, and it's always gone by morning, but I've never had problems limiting their water like that overnight, so they don't HAVE to have access to a lot of it at night. Any chicken coop style shelter should work, I'm sure there's lots of designs on here! I keep the bottom covered in straw, since they're constantly wet. I try and dig it out every couple weeks, which is a great source of mulch/fertilizer. They produce a lot of poop, and I think it's pretty high in nitrogen, but I'm still getting things in order to be able to use it, so it's in a big pile outside their house.

Oh breeding - if you're new to ducks or birds in general, they can be kind of nasty to each other, so I'll just prepare you now. Try to keep your ratio of male to female around 1 male to  3-5 females. The males will fight if there's not enough girls to go around. And - to be blunt - ducks are pretty rapey. The males will mount the females pretty aggressively, and when they have water they'll do it there, and really dunk the females - like you'll be worried they're drowning. They're probably fine (I haven't had any deaths because of that) but I do yell at them or poke the males off with a stick if it's clear they're done and still on top of her. That being said, the eggs are delicious, and they are pretty good mothers! I've had girls go broody on anywhere from 4-19 eggs, and hatch almost all of them. They may need some help keeping everyone together, but I've *mostly* had really good mothers!

Ok that's all I can think of, good luck!

Hi Bartholomew,

that is a great amount of information, thanks a lot for sharing this.

The pond is collecting water from all the roof of the house and its extensions (around 450 sq meters of hard surface), so the input of water is consistent.
How many ducks do you think would be enough to seal this pond in a few weeks (less than 6 months) ?
I will put an electric fence around them so I am planning to build them a small simple coop, that is directly on the ground like the one I sketched here, what do you think?

Thank you

Hi Louis, no problem!

So I don't have experience using ducks to seal a pond - do you have some resource you're using to learn about that? My pond was already here, and we have dense rocky clay soil here, so I don't think it was hard for it to seal itself once it was dug. (I believe mine is man-made as well) I've heard of people using organic material to seal ponds before and always assumed it took quite a bit of material. I don't think ducks are going to perform as well as you might hope on this project. If you wanted to get this done quickly, I would guess you'd need several hundred ducks all working in a tight area to fill it in, which is going to create unhealthy conditions for the ducks themselves! It sounds like you might be better off finding clay soil to seal it, or a lot of partially broken-down organic material to put in it. The other thing with duck poop is that it's mostly organic material, so in pond conditions it's going to break down further into CO2 etc, and literally float away, so you're only getting a certain percentage of that material sticking to the pond bottom anyway.

To give you an idea of how much organic matter mine produce, I usually have 15-20 ducks, and keep them in a little shed at night, which is maybe 4x3 meters. I keep straw on the floor so they can dry out especially in cold weather, and try to get a new layer down every 2-4 weeks when it gets wet and gross. I'll shovel that out every few months, and end up with maybe a 6cm thick layer of straw+poop. I just pile it outside of the shed, and have been doing that for about 2 years now, since I don't have a good garden to put it on yet. The mound is pretty small still, like I could probably move it in 2-4 wheelbarrow loads, which just means it's breaking down a lot, composting away all the organic material.

Can you give an idea of how the soil in the pond drains now? Like if you throw a bunch of water in there, will it drain into the soil in a few minutes/hours/days? What's your starting point like? You mentioned your soil is sandy, and it looks very sandy to me, so this might be a tougher project than you have planned for!

I would post this question on the pond area of permies as well, since this question is getting outside my area of expertise. ;) My advice would be to find a new permies friend in your area with clay soil to seal it (I'd be happy to help but I think shipping costs might be prohibitive for us lol), or a LOT of organic material. I think if you got like 5-10cm of fallen leaves on the pond bottom and filled it with water, that would be a really good starting point to add more organic material and get that delicious organic slime on the bottom!

And your coop design looks great! (for a few ducks, don't put hundreds of ducks in it lol)