Creating a Heron Pond Cover with Build-a-Balls
Posted on 30th May 2019 at 13:47
How to protect your pond from herons with GardenSkill components
One of the great things about this job is seeing all the inventive ways customers use GardenSkill products. For example taking the components for our Build-a-Cage fruit cages and turning them into a nifty heron guard for a garden pond!
Herons are a big problem at this time of year, grabbing fish from ponds at all times of the day, but especially in early morning when we're still tucked up in bed. They also seem to have a horrible knack of flying off the moment you open your curtains and start banging on the window, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
There are many ways to stop herons eating your koi and other pond fish, from something as simple as pond netting to more sophisticated heron deterrents such as electric pond fencing, heron sprinklers and ultrasonic animal repellers. We can now add to that list the GardenSkill Heron Guard!
Unfortunately there's only one of these in existence and credit very much has to go to an intrepid and very inventive customer of ours named Geoff. He started off with a few of our Build-a-Ball fruit cage connectors, powder coated aluminium tubes and bird or butterfly netting, connecting this all up to make a basic garden frame. So far so straighforward. However, there were certain modifications that I'll leave to Geoff to explain...
"The tubes bent to the required shape easily but a few cheats were required. Where the triangular end frames joined together a 2 inch piece of wooden dowel was bonded into the ends of the tubes so screws could be pushed through the ball and tightened up. This helps keep the frames rigid when lifting them on and off the pond"
So there you have it! Well worth trying at home I'd say. I'll book the week off work...
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