questions about making a duck pond.

[Take_Em07]

On my property there used to be a beaver pond that held a fair amount of ducks. Today i came home from college to find that someone had trapped the beaver and the dam was in dismay. the dam has a huge hole in it allowing the creek to flow freely. i kicked up several ducks off the creek where the pond used to be no where near where the number there used to be. the flood plain where the pond was has grass and vegetation growing on it and the creek is 2 ft deep in the deepest part. my question is should i build the damn back up to where it was and flood the pond again. or should i plant some sort of millit or milo before flooding it thanks!

[aggiechiro]

i would definately fix up the damn. the real question is when. i like the millet idea, but you dont want to plant it too early, and while i dont know what growing conditions are like up there i'd probably wait until june or july to plant. then assuming thered still be water then to flood the pond, id do so when the plants started seeding.

[KAhunter]

I would rebuild the dam and install some sort of riser board system or something else to be able to control the water level so you can flood /drain at your will. if you have had a bunch of ducks then you may not need to plant anything like millet (ie have good mast producing trees like oaks or some emergent vegetation like burreed) but it never hurts to plant millet in those areas and then reflood in the fall. good natural flooded timber is hard to beat, thats why i am saying check what type of vegetation you have as you may have enough food already without planting.

[C-Hawk19]

i like the riser board idea we call that a levy around here we do it with a pipe and then drop boards through a slot in the pipe to bring the water level up before season that way you can draw it down every year and plant corn or millet or rice or something like that. it is fairly inexpensive but can be somewhat costly depending on the size. the real cheap way but it is a pain is to sandbag the dam up but i would plant something first.