How to persuade ducks to hang out in our pond and not our natural pool

We are a retreat centre with attached permaculture gardens in south-west Turkey and have a medium-sized pond and a smaller natural pool (for humans only) about 200m apart. When people are in or hanging out by the pool, the ducks stay away. But when it is quiet, the ducks find their way there… so I gave the ducks to a friend. In our experience, retreat guests don’t want to share their swimming space with largish animals that poop! (We don’t mind!) Any suggestions other than re-educating our guests?

Hi John,
Welcome to Permies!

Until the people with real duck experience show up, I was wondering if a fence of some kind might keep the ducks out of the natural swimming pool?

Sounds nice! I agree, a fence. You can use an electric net fence (white, so they see it well) as a semi-permanent solution but if it's not charged they will learn to go through it if they fit, which makes it hard to train them differently. Their feathering doesn't let them get shocked from it easily- just their legs. I can't imagine any other way to persuade them...they know what they want! Maybe a feed dispenser by the duck pond? They might stay closer if they get fed there sometimes. I'd guess not though.

Keeping ducks (or any water fowl, really) out of open water you don't want them in is not easy - I was struggling to keep them out of my livestock water tanks!), but I've found that if I have things floating in the water, they are less likely to trespass. For example, I partially filled bottles with water, sealed them, and floated a few in each stock tank - and they haven't bothered them, since. I got the idea from someone who posted somewhere (sorry, I really can't recall where) that they'd kept wild water fowl out of their 'cement pond' by floating pool toys - the bigger, the better, though not the rafts or loungers.

Something like bouys would likely work, and be far less costly than a fence - especially an attractive fence.

I definitely agree that a fence is your best option because once ducks discover a place to swim they will rarely stop going back. A friend of mine ended up selling her ducks, and getting new ones but hiding the pool from them and so far that worked out quite well!

I also like the idea of putting big pool floaties inside the human pool to make them weary of it. Ducks hate new things. A local pond near me put up fake coyotes around their pond because the geese were contaminating the water and making it super-smelly.