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Allotment Articles1.
Allotment Articles 2.
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Newts And Your
Pond
The word Newt is derived from the Angle Saxon word EVETE that became altered to EWT and then to NEWT. Newts will be encouraged to visit your pond if you have good leaf cover around it. They will be a great benefit to your garden as they will eat all manner of creepy crawlies and help the birds to keep the numbers of worms in your lawn down. It is possible to collect them from the wild and introduce them to your own pond, but it is illegal to remove some species such as the Great Crested newt. The Common newt is much more plentiful and may well arrive on its own. Common newts only grow to about 3 1/2 inches, whereas the Great Crested Newt will reach 6 inches.
If you have Crested Newts in your pond don't tell anybody because the wildlife people may restrict you, from putting fish in which may eat them, or from cleaning it out which may disturb them during the breeding season.
You may want to encourage newts to breed and help their eggs survive. The eggs are laid on the underside of leaves in the water and will be readily eaten by fish. They hatch like tadpoles and spend the early part of their lives in water until they develop into small adults when they will leave the water a lot of the time to hibernate and search for food. If you remove some eggs, from the pond place them into a cool vivarium, in water, and wait a few days, some will hatch. The tank needn't be a particularly large one as newts only grow a few inches in length. The young are easy to care for as they will readily eat fish food and as they develop you can start feeding them on worms, which may appeal to your sadistic side as you see them slowly suck them into their mouths bit by bit!
Very often 2 newts will grab the same worm from opposite ends and start swallowing. When they meet in the middle there is a tug of war sometimes tearing the worm in half. Sometimes one will emerge victor and pull the worm out of the mouth of the other and then it will struggle to swallow its wriggling prey.
Newts will need a dry part in the Vivarium, if they are to be kept for a long time, where they can climb out of the water and have a rest. If they are forced to spend their whole time in the water they can do, but their breading will be affected and with each generation numbers will decrease. If you are successful with your breeding program and want to release some newts into the wild, you can do this as they are a native species. You might also like to contact one of the wildlife organizations that will be very keen to assist you and advise you on the best locations to release the young newts.
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