My farm pond dried up.

Bentonite is the correct name for driller's mud, my fuzzy memory wouldn't bring the name up till I was reminded.
It is my understanding that the reason it is called driller's mud out here is that when they attempt to drill an oil well it is mixed with water in a slush pit and circulated
through the drill stem to bring the tailings from the bit to the surface.
 
Maybe mine doesn't dry up because it's deep and cooler. In the worst drought I've seen here, which was basically an entire summer, there was very little loss in water level. Flow into it was down to less than 1 gal per min. Iirc, it was about .75 Gal/min. The level did drop as I mentioned above, but not much. I'm sure it was a lot of gallons, but not a lot of depth.

So, GT40, I'm assuming then your supply is totally dried up? No flow at all into the pond?

Mines fed by a spring and a dug-well. Flow has never been 0. That water is really cold, all the time. With several days over 100F, it was 59 in the watering trough. From there, it 'leaks' into the pond. I guess it just surprises me a pond could dry up so quickly, but your temps are higher, and humidity is probably a good bit lower.

Stick a 5 gallon bucket of water outside and see how many days it takes for that to evaporate. If that time vs depth doesn't correlate to your ponds rate, then I'd say it's possible your leakage is down, not up.
 
In Minnesota it gets so cold that you can throw a five gallon bucket of hot water out the door and none of it will hit the ground.....

Right now my friends in the South are claiming they can do the same thing

al
 
when i had my pond built 40 years ago the dozer guy dug way down where the dam sits almost his dozer depth then he started bringing clay back in and packing it has never leaked but it does lose water by evaperation.

bob
 
gt40, my pond is much the same way right now as here in Georgia we are still mighty dry. The old timers in these parts swear that herons, egrets, water turkeys, etc. will catch fish from nearby water sources to populate or repopulate a body of water to give them another feeding ground. I can't say this is true but I have seen bodies of water that were built and not a fish put in but fish got there some way. I believe the theory to be sound.
 
Fish eggs are sticky so the current does not dislodge them so it is most likely wading birds bringing in the eggs on their feet.
 
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I've always heard that fish eggs that made it THROUGH the bird were how fish are brought to new ponds.
 
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