I have a pretty good friend who's dad has recently had apond built on their farm. It holds water but only up to a certain dept that is 5-9 feet below where he would like the level of the lake to be. He has now put pigs in his pond to solve this problem as he was told this would fix it. Will this eventually solve his problem and if so how long do you guys think it will take? It is a very clay filled soil although there are quite a few rocks in it. Feedback?
Pigs walking around on the pond banks are theoretically supposed to compact the soil similar to a sheepsfoot roller. Very lucky the pondowner if this technique works. Shallow surface compaction from pigs will probably not work because there are too many variables or other reasons why the pond could be leaking.
If this technique reliably worked it would be in wide-spread use today. You are dealing with folklore.
If the pigs do not work at least you know the problem is deeper within the ponds banks than the surface layer.
Yeah thanks Bill, I have tried to tell my buddy what I thought about it but his dad has never asked me anything about it so I've not shared what I thought about it. I do know he checked into bentonite and liners after I told my friend that these were a couple of options worth looking into, but he wasn't willing to spend that kind of money. I know that the guy that constructed the pond has not done the basic preparation work that I've read in the USDA Pond Construction Book(tilling the soil, removing all rocks and limbs or branches followed by using a sheepsfoot roller).
Often the cheapest job is not always a good finished product. "You dig a hole, but you build a pond".
The guy that built the pond was over at my friends house Sat. night while my wife and I were visiting so I began picking his brain (I'll be nice here). I wasn't impressed at all by his thinking on pond contruction. I had brought over the USDA Pond Construction handbook for my buddy to look at and this guy saw it and said "I have that"and I thought to myself, well he hasn't read all of it or didn't follow it for sure. This is a guy around 25 years old who talked like he was 18.
He did however believe wholeheartedly that pigs work and claimed to have used it several times before on other ponds. He said it hardly ever takes more than 6 months. They set a feeder near the edge of the pond and every few days move it a little further over until they've gone around the entire pond; We'll see if this works. I did find out that this guy never uses a sheepsfoot roller nor does he make any attempt to get any rock out of the surface layer of soil. He may be right for all I know with my limited experience but he said that the rocks make the clay pack better.
Hi, I am new here so I apologize for my ignorance if I don't post correctly.
With regards to pigs and leaky pond. I have some experience as a cat owner and operator and also pigs!
While I have no 1rst hand experience with it, let me pass on a friends advice.
The concept of the pigs feet acting as a "sheep's foot" has a little creedence, but the feces from the pig is the factor. One recomendation from an engineer friend is to dump a load of liquid hog manure in the pond. Said he has done it several times and it works. This of course is based on the pond being resonably well constructed in at least reasonable soil. The amount you dump in is unscientific.
New lagoons require about 6 months of loading to seal. the feces contains quite a bit of mineralized components which I assume are the major sealing components.
Don't be put off by the thouhgt of putting hog manure in your pond. In our state, one of the approved methods of closure of a manure lagoon is to quit loading with manure and allow it to turn into a pond. Seems to work well.
mike,you are 100% write.i know of it being done several times.my neighbor's papa has done it several times for cattle ponds.i can remember as a young kid asking him what the pigs were in the hole for.i just called my neigbor and he said he did not know the details of it but he could remember there were quite a few pigs and he kept them in there for what he thought was about 4-5 months.
My area has yellow clay that holds water real well. Ive seen three ponds here packed with nothing but a dozer and they will leak for the first year and then stop. If your friend has a new pond it
might stop on it's own. The credit will then be given to the pigs. Maybe that's where they get their reputation.
One important note about compaction pigs/dozer. There is a wide variance of ground pressure machine wt divided by track contact area. A typical D7 with standard shoes will be 10 psi probably at most. A cat can certainely compact in the proper soils. The operator must understand what he is trying to accomplish. Most cloven feet animals will 3 to 4X the compaction. Thus some brilliant inventor invented the "sheep's foot" compactor.
If you have access to it, I would vote for shooting a few tanks of liquid manure in. No fences and no disruption of the "compacted" soil liner from rooting. I don't know if one of my ponds is leaking or just hasn't settled in from still not having a belly buster rain since a rebuild of it 2 years ago. If I can't keep it full, I am certainly going to give it the manure tank treatment.
It's a mute point now anyway as the area the pond was built over collapsed due to a sink hole underneath. I new the guys building it hadn't tested the soil. Oh well maybe he'll listen this time but I doubt it.
I wanted to share my experience on pigs, manure, and pond sealing. A little over a year ago I had a 3/4 acre pond dug out in front of our home. It was an old pond site which we extracted about 8 feet of silty muck that had accumulated over the past 30+ years! After the first few rains it would hold water and then slowly seep back into the ground. I assumed this was normal and it was building it's natural water base and sealing off. The pond has held about 1-3 feet of water consistantly and been as high as 4 feet after a nice rain but will never rise above that point! It continues to seep down until it reaches just about 2-3 foot mark then stops.
Since I live close to several farms I had the resource of getting some pigs at no cost and offering to feed them all summer in hopes of sealing my pond. They definately rooted and tromped the banks and muddied up the water. They also rolled around and did what looked like a nice packing job of the pond sides and bottom. After taking them out it did seem to hold maybe a bit better but It certainly didn't give me the results i was hoping for. After the first big rain it went up again and slowly starting seeping back down (although at slower rate this time). Now onto the manure.
My uncle has a large dairy farm with manure lagoons and run off lagoon. He was pumping his 3 acre (15 ft deep) manure lagoon which is mostly water with a light slurry manure mixture in it. Probably 80 percent water if i had to guess. At this point I was so desperate to seal it that I had them pump 1.5 million gallons of it into my pond! It raised the level well outside the banks to push the pond to about 1 acre and probably 15 feet deep dead middle. After the first day of pumping i noticed it was ALREADY dropping which I assumed was just the grassy areas soaking the water into banks. Day two and it had dropped 3-5 feet in some places! That's an immense amount of wate GONE! I had them pump it back full again on day 3 and so far it has seemed to be going down a little slower although still dropping rapidly. I'm definately hoping the manure will settle and form an organic matter seal and possibly the weight of the water itself will push on the banks and bottom to form a seal but definately skeptical. If all 1.5 million gallons of water seep back out of that pond that quickly i am going to go ahead and determine that I have some type of rock or a sink hole underneath top layer of soil. I will definately update post in a week or so to let you know if manure and pig combination did any good!
Welcome to Pond Boss Belkins456. Although folks have accused me of being full of manure, I have never put any in my pond.
Wow these posts go clear back to 2003! You must be reading through the history.
To my way of thinking, most leaks are through sand or maybe even rocks. I've never seen any way that processed vegetation, even well packed, could hold up against the weight of water. I've never talked to anyone who told me it worked for them but have talked to a lot of people that told me about a friend or friend of a friend making it work.
Well i'm currently "laid off" so I do have a ton of time on my hands to sit and read. I didn't realize the date on that post until I had already replied but I see it did grab a couple peoples attention..ha All the old farmers around here swear that pigs, manure or basically any type of livestock will seal a pond and said they have seen it done time after time. My pond dropped another foot in the last day and that was even with a nice rain last night so i'm thinking it will be back to a 3 foot deep mudhole within another week or so which is really discouraging. It just blows my mind where that amount of water is going. I mean there has to be a good sized area leaking but I know the bottom is pretty much sealed because it will leak down to that point and then stop!It has to be going through banks. I'm considering just biting the bullet and ordering a liner for it but that will put me at around 16k total cost (including first unsuccessful excavation) which to me is just insane for a pond right now. That could be a nice inground swimming pool out back that i KNOW would hold water! Anyways i'm still full up to banks and i'll let you know if the manure seals it within next week or so.