Thread: Who has fed there ponds?

I think you have to have a few ducks living on the pond first before you start feeding.Your main pond is very open Dundee which to me looks like a spot ducks might go to in the evening as being open they can escape in all directions. Some daytime ponds that ducks love seem to have a few trees around them for a bit of cover so the duck can sleep on the bank or under trees a little bit protected from the hawks etc. Those type are easier to feed to bring more ducks in to live there. Timing of the feed is the most important thing in my opinion. Our pond is fed at night while the ducks are away eating everyone elses duck food. Doing this disurbs any nighttime visiters so they soon learn to keep away at night but breakfast is waiting for then when they return in the morning. We never go there during the day but the stock work on the farm might disturb them on occasions. Mai mais are built the night before in the dark.
The drought had a big effect on a lot of ponds this year, our pond water was about 2 meters down on last year and many ponds were dry around the area so many ducks left and went to big water, or down south for the late grain harvest.
It becomes an expensive operation if you can't acess cheap duck food, duck go silly over maize and peas if you are trying to attract ducks to your pond but we use barley as its cheaper and we have somewhere where they want to live.
Bread is also good at attracting ducks as its visible on the water and they love it the same as they do at the local park.
So we can sum up and say feeding costs time and money and is not garanteed to bring ducks in the opening morning.
Decoys and calling need to be spot on as well. TIP. Dundee paint those old decoys in the back of your mai mai with flat black paint they will pull ducks in the morning best as long as you resist the idea of putting them out before the season and pull them in after each shoot. Cheers for the rest of the season