Today was another great harvest day!  On August 31, we spawned a female Kikusui with two new Yamabuki longfins.  Longfins you say?  Yes, we are now breeding longfins…here is a little bit of the history…in Spring 2008 we purchased two boxes of Yamabuki longfins from Toshio Sakai (Matsunosuke) all measuring 5-6″.  In the quest for finding high-quality longfin parent stock, we put these small koi to mud for the summer.  At their fall harvest, the potential parents were put aside and the remaining group went for sale.  This summer, two male Yamabuki longfins were selected as ideal parents.  These particular ones were chosen since they were displaying Kujaku-like influences (they were more orange/red/gold).  By pairing them with our very sucessful Kikusui female breeder (see koi from her spawn last year) we have high hopes for these offspring, but still consider this an “experimental spawn” due to using new parents and new mixing of genetics…ok, back to the harvest!!!

These koi are just under 30 days so they are a bit smaller.  With the wacky weather this summer our usual early August spawns were pushed to very late August spawns.  We kept about 500 of these koi and will grow them out this winter, and do the usual culling as they progress.  We anticipate they will darken up in color with time given their genetics.  We’ll keep you updated on their progress.

Today we harvested our Kohaku that were hatched exactly two months ago.  The female breeder was a Matsunosuke Kohaku, that we refer to as Yuri and the males were a Takeda Kohaku, our new Matsunosuke Kohaku, and a Kohaku that we bred.  Overall we were very pleased with the results.  They have soft, thick beni and very tall bodies for their size.  They averaged about 2-4 inches.  Below are some of our favorites from today.

When we harvest a pond, Mat and Ross will pull the seine net through the pond to the shallow end.  When harvesting the smaller koi they usually catch about 90% of the koi in the initial pull.  To get the remaining koi they will set the pond to drain, and put a sieve over the drain pipe so none of the koi escape to our retention basin.  They need to constantly monitor the draining, and once they start to see the dorsal fins emerge from the water it’s time for action!  The guys will hand scoop each one of the koi into a sock and bring them to the trailer, where the fresh water is water for them.

On Friday we harvested the koi from our Yamabuki spawn.  In 2005, we bred a female Yamabuki with a male Yamabuki and a male metallic doitsu, who we lovingly refer to as our “Funky Doitsu.”  We were so pleased with the results that we paired everyone together again.  On Monday, I will post some pictures of the offpspring from our original breeding in 2005.  The actual number of fry from this spawn was on the small side, approximately 2500, so we raised all of them until the culling/harvest, and we ended up with 1150 koi that came into the greenhouse.  People often wonder how you cull Yamabuki since it is only one color.  In this case, we are looking for overall shine.  When culling small koi, you have to use the clues you see to try to determine what this koi will look like at 20″, at 30″, etc.  Below are pictures of some koi that were harvested.  When you look at the pictures, keep in mind that these koi just came out of mud so their yellow is not yet vibrant, as it will be in a few days of natural sunlight.