Bone dry

[London Best]

Never tried bananas but barley, wheat or peas work well. Personally not had much luck with spuds but many do. Big oak in my garden......acorns work.

[Farmboy91]

I just told my boy I would need some help picking up a few acorn's and then spreading them down the pond to see if we could get a few ducks to come in and he said

'yay I can't wait to try duck' 

Hopefully he'll be up for shooting a few for me 😂

[WalkedUp]

That’s brilliant; was expecting a different ending when I read the first few words. 👍

 

[Farmboy91]

To be honest he's pretty good at trying things once, I grew up being forced to eat my mother's cooking and I swore I'd never make my child eat something they genuinely don't like.

Hare is by far he's favourite and Canada goose went down pretty well too. 

[WalkedUp]

That’s great, my boys love duck (granny cooks it a lot) but they have never tried hare or goose. I am sure they would love it as all they seem to eat is meat. We don’t buy cheap meat out of principle and support local butchers etc so it’s expensive. Probably need one or two of them to go vegan before I can afford to get a new Land Rover 🤣

[Farmboy91]

I love hare myself but I'm quite happy to watch them hop by now, much to my lads disappointment.

The goose came after I was asked to help cull a few, I'd seen various different things on how good the meat was to eat, it came nice with a few potatoes and a bit of gravy. I'm thinking about making a smoker and then doing pigeon and rabbit that I've got in the freezer. 

I know what you mean though, we use the local game dealer/butcher's when we can, had some lovely venison mince the other day which went into burgers.

It's great your kids love to eat game, I genuinely feel for those that aren't given to opportunity to try it out.

I'm hoping in the next few months that a bit of land is going to become available which means I'll have access to muntjac and a fair amount of rabbits, really hoping to cut down how much meat comes from the supermarket. 

 I can only dream about buying a landy haha

Might be an excuse to buy a pick up though....

[old'un]

Been out today on some laid barley, while I was there I took a picture of a pond I used to feed, its now overgrown and the water level is down about two feet, it dried out about 2 or 3 years ago and as never come back to what it was, its horseshoe shaped but you cannot see all the pond in the picture, when feed this little pond would pull around 80-90 ducks in most nights, we used to shoot it every couple of weeks and two guns could easily shoot 20-30 ducks but we never did.

The key thing with flight ponds is to start feeding in August, once you start feeding do not stop if ducks are coming into your pond, it may take some time for them to find it but once they do its surprising how quickly the numbers build up and how much food they get through in a night, of course there is never a guarantee that you will get ducks coming to your pond but unless you try you will never know.

If I was you I would get a couple of bags of barley in the shallows now, you can also add any acorns you have collected later.

 

[mossy835]

that was a lot of ducks,coming to that pond.

[old'un]

11 minutes ago, mossy835 said:

that was a lot of ducks,coming to that pond.

Were lucky where we are as there are some big waters within a couple of miles that hold some big numbers of duck during the day, we have another pond about A mile away that used to-be an irrigation pond but no longer used, its about 40 yards x 25yards, its feed heavy and some nights we have counted over 200 ducks coming in.

[Farmboy91]

1 hour ago, old'un said:

Been out today on some laid barley, while I was there I took a picture of a pond I used to feed, its now overgrown and the water level is down about two feet, it dried out about 2 or 3 years ago and as never come back to what it was, its horseshoe shaped but you cannot see all the pond in the picture, when feed this little pond would pull around 80-90 ducks in most nights, we used to shoot it every couple of weeks and two guns could easily shoot 20-30 ducks but we never did.

The key thing with flight ponds is to start feeding in August, once you start feeding do not stop if ducks are coming into your pond, it may take some time for them to find it but once they do its surprising how quickly the numbers build up and how much food they get through in a night, of course there is never a guarantee that you will get ducks coming to your pond but unless you try you will never know.

If I was you I would get a couple of bags of barley in the shallows now, you can also add any acorns you have collected later.

 

Thanks for posting that, would be well chuffed if half that many came in, couple 3 ducks every few weeks would be 👌

[Farmboy91]

Just a little update,

I did attempt the acorn idea, my lad helped me gather up half a bucket or so and we spread them as close to the waters edge as we could on Saturday. So far as I can tell the only wildfowl is a resident moorhen that's been kicking around most of the year.

I went back and checked last night and they hadn't been touched. I spread out the last of the acorn's a bit further along but I think there is far to much foliage for anything to find them. I will stick a picture up next time I'm over there in daylight. 

 

[London Best]

Feed in shallow water for duck, not over welly deep.

[Farmboy91]

25 minutes ago, London Best said:

Feed in shallow water for duck, not over welly deep.

Ahh, can't get anywhere near the actual waters edge because of how far it's receded and the amount of plants.

[old'un]

If I was you I would get a bag or two of barley and dump that in the shallows, you say you have seen the odd duck on the pond? well all it needs is for your one duck to find the barley and you can bet his/her mates will be following, look along the margins for duck feathers and as I said earlier you will soon know when ducks have been feeding, it may take some time but if they are using the pond and they find food the numbers should increase.

Do you have any biggish waters near or parks with big lakes?

just seen your latest post about it being overgrown, well that looks like a work party is in order, get your wellies out.  

[Farmboy91]

It was the smaller one that I had seen the duck and geese on, as it was empty I was hoping it would push them onto this one instead. I do plan on heading down there am hour or so before dark one evening and just watch to see if anything comes in.

There's an old quarry in the area with a couple small lakes, these two ponds were part of the older site. 

Ha, honestly it I was mine to do with as I pleased i would open it up a bit and clear it out. Who knows, maybe my number's will come up Saturday 🤞😂

[Balotelli]

On 01/09/2020 at 10:53, WalkedUp said:

That’s great, my boys love duck (granny cooks it a lot) but they have never tried hare or goose. I am sure they would love it as all they seem to eat is meat. We don’t buy cheap meat out of principle and support local butchers etc so it’s expensive. Probably need one or two of them to go vegan before I can afford to get a new Land Rover 🤣

Duck is fine but there ain't a lot of meat on mallards. Irritating stupid birds and deserve to be shot. Cleared a friend's pond in her garden of frogspawn. Canada geese are dreadful eating but "domestic" geese and ducks are great. Many years ago I used to eat hare, fabulous eating but just couldn't shoot or eat one now. What's wrong with pigeon? In many respect the best eating of the lot and to all intents and purposes free. Be careful what you wish for on the vegan bit  though!!