Pond construction in Shawnee, OK is mostly cattle country work. Pottawatomie County held 154,125 acres of pastureland in the 2022 USDA farm census. It also carried 43,367 head of cattle and calves. Only 1,094 acres in the whole county were irrigated. Water on these places gets caught and held on site. That job falls to stock ponds. When one silts in or goes dry, the herd feels it fast. We run out of Ada, about 47 miles south of town, and build ponds up this way through the year.
We run a Cat D6 dozer and a 30,000 pound excavator, plus a tracked skid steer. Moving that equipment 47 miles costs real money. So we favor full scope work in Shawnee over quick looks. A new pond and the heavy dirt work around it fits well. So does cleaning out two or three old ponds on one place in a single move. On an ongoing ranch job near Sulphur we have built four ponds. Estimates are free, so call (580) 344-7473 and tell us what your ground is doing.
Tell us about your property and we'll get back to you fast.
Pottawatomie County sits in Oklahoma's Sandstone Hills. Ground built over sandstone runs coarse and sandy in a lot of spots. Sandy ground drains. Dig a bowl in it, fill it with runoff, and watch the level drop for weeks. Sandy basins are the usual reason a new pond will not hold. So we test before we shape anything. We dig holes across the basin and down the dam line with the excavator. We look for a clay layer thick enough to seal the bottom. Sandy loam over clay is a good find. Sand all the way down means we move the pond to better dirt. A few hundred feet can change what the ground gives you.
When we find clay, we key the dam into it. That means cutting a core trench down the middle of the dam line. It reaches into the clay layer, and we pack clay back in it in lifts. Skip that trench and water slips under the dam through the sand. If a place has no clay in the basin, we haul it from a pocket somewhere else on the property. We also size the spillway to the watershed above the pond. A pond that fills fast in a spring storm needs a safe place to put the extra water. We push the deep end to ten or twelve feet so it carries a herd through August.
Most ponds around Shawnee were not built last year. They were pushed up decades ago for cattle and have been filling in ever since. Runoff carries sand and silt off the pasture into the basin every storm. A pond that started at twelve feet deep can sit at four. Cattle work the banks down into shallow shelves. Cedar and brush root into the dam, and those roots open paths for water. From the road it still looks like a pond. It just will not carry stock through a dry stretch. A cleanout is less work than a new build, since the basin and dam already exist. That is the call we get most out of this county.
Shawnee has big water already. Wes Watkins Reservoir covers 1,142 acres near McLoud and opened in 1999. Shawnee Twin Lakes sit west of the city. None of that waters a herd in a back pasture two miles off the highway. So the county stays dotted with small ponds, one or two per place. They sit in the draws that drain toward the North Canadian, the Canadian, and the Little rivers. We build and clean them out around Tecumseh, Bethel Acres, Macomb, Asher, and Pink. The same work runs west toward McLoud. For the rest of what we run in this area, see our work around Shawnee, or read how a pond gets built start to finish.
More about the service itself is on our Pond Construction page, and everything we do around town is on the Shawnee service-area page.
Free, no-obligation estimates throughout Pottawatomie County.
(580) 344-7473Answers specific to pond construction work around Shawnee. Something else on your mind? Call us.
Cedar taking the pasture, a pad to build, an old house to take down, or a pond you have been thinking about for years? Call or send the form. We come look at the property with you, and the estimate is free, from the owner who runs the machines.
Tell us about your property and we'll get back to you fast.
