When we arrived at the farm, we noticed a flock of buzzards in the goat yard. Our first thoughts were that something bad had happened to a goat.
Upon closer inspection, we determined that the buzzards were feasting on fish. We had a ‘fish kill’. Below is the second day of the fish kill.
A Fish Kill may be due to several different reasons. Overpopulation causing lack of oxygen, algae bloom, chemical fish kill from ‘run-off’ of chemicals, temperature changes and lake inversion are the most common. An inversion or having your pond ‘turn over’ is obvious when a green and healthy lake suddenly appears brown with dead fish floating on the top. Cold water is usually heavier than warm water. The deeper you go in a pond, the colder the water temperature becomes. As the weather warms, the warmth works it way down and even the lower colder water becomes warmer. If a cold snap happens and cools the surface water faster than the lower levels of water, the top colder water sinks and the warmer water rises to the top. Unfortunately, the lower layers of the pond usually contain less oxygen. This inversion causes the oxygen depleted water to replace the oxyginated water where the fish are living and the fish die from a lack of oxygen. This situation can last for several days.
Buzzards are nature’s vacuum cleaners. As soon as we left the goat yard yesterday, the buzzards descended again. Today is our third day of the fish kill. Fortunately, there are fewer dead fish today. I guess we can plan on a lot more buzzards visiting the goat yard this week.
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