The Coy Pond

H20fwler

5 year old buck +
About five miles from our bigger farm we have a smaller piece of land roughly eight acres that is mostly hardwoods that has a ten-fifteen yard wide border strip of switchgrass and clover that runs around it.
I planted a small orchard of twenty apple, pear and crabapple trees along the south end this past spring. There is a large river about two miles to the north and a creek that has water year round a mile to the south but no water source really close, this small woods is in a natural funnel between larger woods surrounded by agricultural fields of rotated corn, soybeans and wheat.
It is a flat out deer magnet, very thick with about every low growing plant, bush and tree with thorns and needles growing in it, it was logged about ten years ago and is a bunny paradise. I get some really nice pics of impressive bucks summer&fall and have does and fawns living in the woods year round.

What has bothered me is the property did not have it's own water source, sometime in the future I would like to buy another couple of acres butting up to it and put in a small pond, but I have too many projects going on for that just now.
So after reading all the great threads of you guys digging in wading pools, horse troughs and coy ponds to create small water holes and the awesome pics you all were getting I decided to try it. I started looking at Lowes and Menards pricing coy ponds. My plan was to buy one on Black Friday on sale and put it in early spring...then a couple weeks ago on my way to work I spotted a used one in a front yard that was 24" deep and maybe 8'X6' around for $50 and bought it.
So yesterday morning while my boys were in town we took it out and dug it in at the end of the orchard! Hopefully by next spring it will be full and the animals will start using it, I plan on keeping a trail cam on it to see how it does.

Big thank you to everyone on this site for the great idea.

My crew starting the hole for it;
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The coy pond dug in along the edge of the woods;
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We put it in at ground level, it was only about 72 degrees when we started digging into that hard dry clay but we all three sweated our butts off by the time it was finished!
It isn't practical for me to haul water in to it, I think it hold like 300 gallons, it is about four hundred yards from the road surrounded by standing corn so I'm going to let nature fill it.
 
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As you are in Ohio, how will you handle freeze out?
 
As you are in Ohio, how will you handle freeze out?

I was wondering that exact same thing (a couple hours after we finished), it's down in the clay and sometimes we get a week or two of -20 below or more wind chills.
A couple of the guys I work with have coy ponds in their back yards with fish in them, I'll ask if they do anything special. I was probably supposed to line the bottom of the hole with deep sand and backfill with sand or something before I put the insert in?
 
That's cool.

I would think the ice will just expand above water line and not crack it. Path of least resistance will be up.
 
I was wondering that exact same thing (a couple hours after we finished), it's down in the clay and sometimes we get a week or two of -20 below or more wind chills.
A couple of the guys I work with have coy ponds in their back yards with fish in them, I'll ask if they do anything special. I was probably supposed to line the bottom of the hole with deep sand and backfill with sand or something before I put the insert in?

My sister has one and it is aerated year round. I think that helps minimizing the freezing. It also maintains required oxygen year round.
 
I'm looking forward to it full of water and seeing how the local wildlife uses it.

Tomorrow I'm going to dig a little and back fill some on the sides with sand that should let some leach underneath into the air pockets when it rains too. My concern is/was of it getting pushed up out of the ground by the freezing/thawing clay in my area during the winter.

Has anyone on here put one in heavy clay soils that freeze hard? If so were there any problems or did you have to do anything to prevent it pushing up in winter?
 
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We put a very similar pond in on my dad's land. It's been in the ground for close to 10 years and freezing hasn't caused cracks or anything like that. The whole thing appears to have heaved up and the edge now sits a couple inches above ground level but it's no cause for concern. It sees lots of use from deer and other animals.
 
I went ahead and backfilled the coy pond with sand yesterday morning to try and help it from not heaving out of the clay during a really bad winter.


Trimmed up my locust tree stand that is about thirty five yards from it, you can just see the first apple tree in the little orchard of twenty planted about eight yards above the coy pond.

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It's been so dry this year, I'm going to do the same thing. Gonna use a kiddy pool rather than a koi pond tho.


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I have a kiddie pool that I got free from the town dump. I also use 55 gallon plastic food grade barrels cut in half the long way. I do not dig them into the ground but rather just put rocks in them to keep them in place. Rain water fills them. The problem I have is that the oaks and other trees drop lots of leaves into the water barrels and this flotsam composts on the bottom of the barrels. This turns the water very tannic and the deer will not drink it. They get well used until late fall. I just take them in every spring or fall depending on time available for the job on the FEL of the Kubota and give them a good scrubbing out at the hydrant by the mobile home. I have four spots with barrels spread out on my 122 acres. I also dug a 5K square foot pond 75 yards from the mobile home as a primary water spot that gets water pumped into it daily.
 
neighbor has cow/horse water tanks freeze all the time.....they don't break! He actually hangs knotted ropes in them hung over the edge so when they do freeze he can get a hold of the ice and pull it out for the animals to use until it freezes over again. Only way I would be concerned about a freeze is if the thing froze solid - then it might bust. I think you will be fine. I have a redneck swimming pool that I'm waiting n the wife to get tired of looking at that I intend on using as a liner for a nice sized water hole. My soil has very little clay and a liner is needed to hold water for any length of time. I think the pool is 24' in diameter! I figure that should do the job!
 
We had some good rains this past week so I figured the koi pond would need just a little more backfilling. I hauled four more bags of sand and a shovel in this morning and got it all finished up. It needed all the sand and I shoveled a little more dirt around the edges. It has really filled up, it's about a foot away from the top edge now. The raccoons have found it and seem to be having a good time by all the tracks and coon crap around, didn't see any deer tracks yet.
The algae looks pretty bad already so I think I am going to throw a copper water fitting into it? I had read on here somewhere that just a little copper helps keep the algae down?
Also going to put a trail cam on it in the next day or two so I can watch what all uses it this fall.


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Had some deer pics on the koi pond, I need to adjust the camera some.
The coons sure love the water...found one of the copper fittings I threw in on the trail up to it.

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Took a look at the skimmed over koi pond Saturday and planted some chicory and ladino around it. Full of water now and it didn't heave out at all over winter....plenty of coon tracks and even some deer around it.


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That's nice. Good place to keep a trailcam.
 
I do need to set a post to mount a trail cam on to watch what all comes in.

I stopped in to check on the little orchard and to over seed some clover and snapped this pic of the koi pond, lots of deer tracks to and from. The clover and chicory are also coming in around it decent.

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Did the copper help with the water quality?
 
Did the copper help with the water quality?

Yes if I can keep the fittings in it....the raccoons pull them out for whatever crazy coon reason and then loose interest in them and usually leave them on the ground within ten yards or so.
I'm thinking of wiring them on bottom of the log or to a piece of cinder block to try and keep them from messing with them.
 
Looks good I have harvested several deer around my water hole.It seems as if they are a social spot as much as a drinking spot
 
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