This year we did an interested mix with our Ochiba female.

Female

Male- Doitsu Goshiki

Male – Gin Rin Goshiki

Do mixes like this when breeding can be a real gamble. Some times our gambles pay off. We were very happy with the variety of unique koi the came from this breeding.

This week we harvested the last of our female koi from the mud ponds.

This harvest was moved up in our schedule due an out of town client, who has koi in this mud pond, coming to visit the farm this week. Linda joked how she got the speedy version of the harvest! With only 12 22in-29in koi..it didn’t take long for us to get thru them.

Mat even put linda to work, recording the koi as they came out of the mud pond.

Here are some of the girls who came out

Linda said we could share a few of her koi too..

Over the past few week we saw some little koi in the pond. Although Mat was sure he put only females in the pond, a male can sneak in. After carefully sexing the koi, Mat is sure they are all female. The number of babies were few, not what you would expect if a spawning took place.  Our conclusion -dropped by birds or more likely, the muskrats have dug a tunnel connecting to the pond beside.

Pictures for our Main Event Harvest are still coming in. Thank you to Kole who sent these in.

For those who have yet joined us for harvest and are still wondering what the event is all about, Koles pictures help tell the story.

Many of the previous blogs showed the pictures of the koi being caught and takend out of the mud ponds.

The next thing we do is bring the koi up to the greenhouses where they are unloaded from the transport tanks. Each koi is evaluted by Mat McCann the Breeder here at Quality Koi.

We are asked all the time how we track all these koi. Each koi before heading to the mud ponds in the spring is photographed and sized. When each koi is brought out of the mud pond in the fall, it is matched up to its spring picture. This tells us how the koi has developed and grown during its time in the mud. The koi’s new size is documented and a price is given for the koi. It also tells us if all the koi were successfully caught or if we have to go back in to the ponds.

The famous “Photo Board”

The koi then are placed in show tanks according to “Sold” or a “Priced”.

This process can be quick or slow depending on how many koi were in the mud pond. But, its was worth it to those who stayed around. After getting a quick bite, Mat spent the afternoon speaking about all the koi that were harvested that day. What he found to be good points of the koi..and of course sometimes bad point. Thats the gamble with koi!

Here is Kole’s Showa. She went in the mud in spring at 17inches and was harvested at 22.5 inches

I believe Kole is very happy with her!

Thank you Kole!

Well, the weekend is done and everyone has gone, but we have ALOT of photos to share. Even though our staff was busy with the koi, we were lucky that customers had their cameras out and shooting.

Kavent and Lee have sent us many pictures from the event and i will keep sharing them with you.

If you were here and have any photos you wish to share, please send them over and i will put them up.

Here are more koi!

A small crowd gathered Monday morning in the rain to see the last of our big girls come in from the mud.

But the rain didn’t ruin the fun for those who have been waiting a whole year to see their koi!

Mondays pond brought us back to some smaller koi then those thru the weekend. These girls were coming out at between 20 -24 inches.

But the fun part about these koi, is we got a chance to see some varieties that were not seen thru the weekend

Sunday morning was the highlight of the weekend with the largest of the females coming out of the mud.  Even after a long few days, every was excited and ready to see these girls come out!

The pull was a bit easier then the ponds the guys pulled the past two days..maybe to easy????

But it still took some muscles to get these big girls out

These girls went in the mud pond  24inches- 26.5inches  and the largest was harvested at 31inches

Despite a bit of rain, we had a great group gather to watch the koi be harvested from our acre pond. It took 6 guys to pull this pond! 

These 3 year old koi went to the mud ponds in spring between 18-22 inches. The koi when harvested averaged a 6 inch growth.

The Kikokuryu are the last tosai to be updated.

We used a Male Kujaku – due to having 3 colors – in the breeding, with hopes he would throw gold onto the babies from our female Kikokuryu. We placed a long fin male in the mix as well, with hope of long fin Kikokuryu.

Males:

Tosai Harvested – Kin Kikokuryu

This ends our tosai harvest for now. We will be putting our full attention over the next week to getting the greenhouses and farm ready to receive the koi that will be harvested at our Main Event Harvest – Oct 1-4th.

After all the Main Event  koi are safely in we will return to harvesting the tosai.

ALOT is happening here at the farm this fall, so keep WATCHING!