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!