Case study #9
To continue my blogging this holiday season... another case study, and the first case study of one of my July 14 spawning.
The way I go about writing these case studies is to first look through my hard drive and pull out all the pictures of the koi in question; then lay them out in chronological order and annotate. The kohaku being subjected to my case study treatment this time is the koi that I won my first baby champion award with. That was in June 15 at the South of England Koi Show, where it beat 80 koi to win the award.
As will be familiar to readers of the blog, I repeated the July 14 spawning this year in May 15 , and this case study will be a useful comparator for me, because it shows what a good koi from that parent set looks like at 7/8 months old. So I've been studying the pics from this case study very closely and I'll take some individual pics of some of the most promising babies from this years spawning over the next month and then we can compare them to this case study to see how they match up - and perhaps give me some ideas which of my 2015 babies might develop in the most exciting ways over 2016.
Back to this case study, which once again I'll show in pics and video:
18th October 2014
16th january 2015
15th February 2015
At the South of England Show, 2015 (June)
Here's a write up by Mark Gardener of the major winners from that show - which includes a much better pic of my kohaku:
link to Mark Gardener's blog - write up of the South of England show major winners
also, a link to some video taken at the show by Les Bean, of my vat and the baby champ:
video link
At the benching for Kangei Koi Club's Garden Show 2015 (12th September 2015) - it was benched into size 3 at 38cm, where it came 2nd in size and variety out of 8 koi - coming second to another one of my home bred kohaku; a male which won the size and variety and came second in size 3 overall (i.e. irrespective of variety). So, does this mean it's slipping back in it's quality against it's siblings? Or is this a case of one of it's siblings just looking really good at the time of the show? Difficult to say..
21st November 2015
I took some video of my top 17 nissai that weekend (21/22 Nov), and this koi is the first one profiled in that video - which you can see here:
video clip
Not the fastest grower from that spawning, and not the smallest either... I had the fish in the bowl a few weeks ago and it measured in the mid 40's cm and this was also the first time I felt able to sex the koi, which I believe is a female.
The typical forecast for a koi that wins baby champion is that it's best day has passed. It will be interesting to watch this one develop over the next year or two and see whether it has any further glory, or whether it's best day is indeed in the past.
The way I go about writing these case studies is to first look through my hard drive and pull out all the pictures of the koi in question; then lay them out in chronological order and annotate. The kohaku being subjected to my case study treatment this time is the koi that I won my first baby champion award with. That was in June 15 at the South of England Koi Show, where it beat 80 koi to win the award.
As will be familiar to readers of the blog, I repeated the July 14 spawning this year in May 15 , and this case study will be a useful comparator for me, because it shows what a good koi from that parent set looks like at 7/8 months old. So I've been studying the pics from this case study very closely and I'll take some individual pics of some of the most promising babies from this years spawning over the next month and then we can compare them to this case study to see how they match up - and perhaps give me some ideas which of my 2015 babies might develop in the most exciting ways over 2016.
Back to this case study, which once again I'll show in pics and video:
15th February 2015
At the South of England Show, 2015 (June)
Here's a write up by Mark Gardener of the major winners from that show - which includes a much better pic of my kohaku:
link to Mark Gardener's blog - write up of the South of England show major winners
also, a link to some video taken at the show by Les Bean, of my vat and the baby champ:
video link
At the benching for Kangei Koi Club's Garden Show 2015 (12th September 2015) - it was benched into size 3 at 38cm, where it came 2nd in size and variety out of 8 koi - coming second to another one of my home bred kohaku; a male which won the size and variety and came second in size 3 overall (i.e. irrespective of variety). So, does this mean it's slipping back in it's quality against it's siblings? Or is this a case of one of it's siblings just looking really good at the time of the show? Difficult to say..
I took some video of my top 17 nissai that weekend (21/22 Nov), and this koi is the first one profiled in that video - which you can see here:
video clip
Not the fastest grower from that spawning, and not the smallest either... I had the fish in the bowl a few weeks ago and it measured in the mid 40's cm and this was also the first time I felt able to sex the koi, which I believe is a female.
The typical forecast for a koi that wins baby champion is that it's best day has passed. It will be interesting to watch this one develop over the next year or two and see whether it has any further glory, or whether it's best day is indeed in the past.
