I love watering everything with dirty duck water, however, we were putting a watering can into the water and then hauling it to the plants.
That isn’t exactly the most efficient use of our time! Yeah, we have free fertilizer now, but when I have to keep going back to the duck pool for more, it would end up taking over a couple hours of walking back and forth, and to me that exhibits poor management skills and a lack of creative ingenuity.
That being said, we came up with an idea for hauling and distributing the duck water…the photo to the top left is the finished product.
We got a 700 lb maximum load capacity garden cart, and sitting inside the cart is a rain water barrel.
At first I just wanted to siphon the water from a hose into the water barrel, but that was a gross disaster! No, I didn’t suck off the end of the hose till my lips were touching duck poop water, but I did need to try to fill the hose up with liquid to start the siphoning action.
Because of the extreme height of the water barrel on the cart, it wasn’t working! Grrr! I ended up using a bucket to pour the water in.
On a very sad note, we lost one of our chicks yesterday. We are unsure how it happened, but when Dom and Vicki went outside to check on the ducks and chicks, they found Pinkie floating in the pool. I was kind of afraid that would happen to Pinkie. I’ll tell you a little bit about
Pinkie in the short time we had her to the end of life. We called her Pinkie because her two middle toes were pink.
The name just popped out one day and it stuck.
At first we thought she was a roo because she was larger than the other chick, but alas she was a chicken.
Pinkie was actually very affectionate and would tolerate us picking her up, holding her and us taking her outside for some bug patrol.
When we would come into the room (before we moved them outside), Pinkie would hop up to the top of the kiddie pool and perch herself there to get closer to us.
If I put the camera into the pen, she was the one that was so curious she would just stare into the camera. You can see her in the video, click here.
Pinkie was unafraid when we came near her and she was always trying to fit in with the ducks. Actually she was like a little social chameleon, changing to fit in with whom ever was round at the moment. Although she did try to fit in, she was fond of her best mate…the unnamed other chick.
Pinkie was the only one we named so far. We were waiting to see their personalities shine through before we started naming…plus we don’t know which of the ducklings are drakes yet.
Anyway, if I took Pinkie out to the garden (she used to hide under the broccoli) she would start to peep really loud and that’s when we realized that she wouldn’t tolerate being away from her best mate.
As soon as we’d bring the other chick out, she would quiet down and they would start chirping and scratching the ground. Pinkie did the same thing with the ducks. She ran with the ducks thinking she was one of them I think. I was afraid she would try to take a swim eventually and drown.
I’m not sure if she actually did attempt to go into the pool with the ducks, but I think she may have hopped up onto the rim of the pool and when a gust of wind came by, it blew her into the pool and she drowned.
Interesting thing is that I usually keep a few bricks in the pool so that the ducks can stand in the water, but since they outgrew the little baby pool, we filled the bigger one up and put all the bricks in there. Pinkie didn’t have anything to stand on, and the bricks would most likely have saved her life.
Poor Pinkie! We’ll miss you darling. Pinkie and her best mate were there to be courtyard chickens and because their temperaments are/were so docile, I feel they would be good companions for Silkies.
They were not fowl that would end up being eaten…just their eggs when they were old enough, so it was hard to see one of our birds dead.
There is a different attachment we had to the chicks than to the ducklings. I am becoming attached to some of the ducklings, only because I know which ones we’ll be using for breeding. My dad will be going back to the store where he purchased the chicks to see if we can get a replacement Pinkie around the same age. I don’t think her best mate will do well without another chick present. She was very attached to Pinkie and didn’t run with the ducklings the way Pinkie did. They stuck together most of the time, but they both did cuddle up to the ducks when going to sleep. We’ll get her a best mate so she won’t be alone. 🙁
Okay, back to the duck water cart…
The barrel and cart worked well EXCEPT for the fact that it was so damn heavy it was getting stuck in the gravel.
On a hard surface its easy to cart around 300 + lbs of poopie water, but the wheels are getting stuck in the loose gravel.
It took a joint effort of both Dom and I pushing and pulling the cart to get everything watered.
The one area we didn’t get to yesterday was the mini kitchen garden. I’ll be doing that this morning.
Other than that, the cart and barrel works great. The water barrel has a spigot on it that we hook a hose up to, and when the water starts to get too low, we just fill it with more clean water. I open the spigot and voila…poop soup being poured out in copious amounts.
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