Spawning ·
Second phase of our 2019 spawnings
We’re starting the second phase of our 2019 spawnings this weekend. With 5 of our 6 ponds laid to Kohaku… (3 x Sharkey, 2 x Lava Rosa) it’s time to focus on a different variety to fill the final pond.
Here's a video of the Lava Rosa hatchlings just before putting them into the fry pond:
We have females of Showa, Ogon, Beni Kikokuryu and Kujaku… and also Shiro Utsuri remaining.
Beni Kikokuryu would be my next stop but, I think she dropped her eggs earlier in the year and is not ready for spawning currently. I will try her again.. but to do so, I need to leave her long enough so that she develops another batch of eggs which means I’ll be bumping up against the end of the season before she’s ready… And that may even be too soon, and frustratingly ... that means another year to wait!
It’s difficult to look past Ogons for the next spawning. Reflecting on the 11 months since our first Ogon spawning last year… we have learned so much about this variety in terms of spawning, rearing, selecting and, now following the BKKS National 2019, that brood set has become award winning too.. with one of it’s tosai winning a show prize against strong competition! So… we will go with Ogons this weekend, but a different female to the one I used last year. I shall explain…
With the Mukashi Ogons, you get quite a wide range of colours and variants in the babies, and one of the variants is what I can best describe as a green/brown metallic.. We had very few from our 2018 Ogon spawning and following this years All Japan Koi Show, where the well known Japanese breeder Marudo won a major award with one of these green/brown ogons.. there has been a lot more interest in them. And as it happens.. last year we picked up a very high quality female of that type to give us some Ogon options to spawn this year. She is a jumbo koi in all regards, well into the 70’s cm at just 3 yrs old.. She hasn’t spawned before which make the spawning a little harder to plan, but the variation on Ogon that she provides us with is very exciting and I feel now is the time to give her a run out. So that’s the plan for this weekend.
If all goes well, she will provide us with hatchlings for our last pond. If not, we’ll go with our original Ogon female.
We hope to have a second use out of 3 of the 6 fry ponds for late summer spawnings – and that is when we will spawn the Kujaku and try the Beni Kikokuryu one more time. And, also Showa. My daughter is really keen to spawn Shiro Utsuri so somewhere amongst that lot we will no doubt be trying that too !! Across the whole year, we are aiming to produce 75% kohaku and there is also a kohaku female that I want to try with a different males pairing, perhaps late summer. So, exactly how we fill the remaining ponds will depend on several factors.
We've started preparing the final fry pond for use... It's been a long slog to expand the number of fry ponds, and now, finally we have 6 fry ponds!
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| This years Lava Rosa spawning has been the best yet, and we went with the same males pairing that we used last year. We have 2 ponds allocated for these hatchlings. |
We have females of Showa, Ogon, Beni Kikokuryu and Kujaku… and also Shiro Utsuri remaining.
Beni Kikokuryu would be my next stop but, I think she dropped her eggs earlier in the year and is not ready for spawning currently. I will try her again.. but to do so, I need to leave her long enough so that she develops another batch of eggs which means I’ll be bumping up against the end of the season before she’s ready… And that may even be too soon, and frustratingly ... that means another year to wait!
It’s difficult to look past Ogons for the next spawning. Reflecting on the 11 months since our first Ogon spawning last year… we have learned so much about this variety in terms of spawning, rearing, selecting and, now following the BKKS National 2019, that brood set has become award winning too.. with one of it’s tosai winning a show prize against strong competition! So… we will go with Ogons this weekend, but a different female to the one I used last year. I shall explain…
With the Mukashi Ogons, you get quite a wide range of colours and variants in the babies, and one of the variants is what I can best describe as a green/brown metallic.. We had very few from our 2018 Ogon spawning and following this years All Japan Koi Show, where the well known Japanese breeder Marudo won a major award with one of these green/brown ogons.. there has been a lot more interest in them. And as it happens.. last year we picked up a very high quality female of that type to give us some Ogon options to spawn this year. She is a jumbo koi in all regards, well into the 70’s cm at just 3 yrs old.. She hasn’t spawned before which make the spawning a little harder to plan, but the variation on Ogon that she provides us with is very exciting and I feel now is the time to give her a run out. So that’s the plan for this weekend.
If all goes well, she will provide us with hatchlings for our last pond. If not, we’ll go with our original Ogon female.
We hope to have a second use out of 3 of the 6 fry ponds for late summer spawnings – and that is when we will spawn the Kujaku and try the Beni Kikokuryu one more time. And, also Showa. My daughter is really keen to spawn Shiro Utsuri so somewhere amongst that lot we will no doubt be trying that too !! Across the whole year, we are aiming to produce 75% kohaku and there is also a kohaku female that I want to try with a different males pairing, perhaps late summer. So, exactly how we fill the remaining ponds will depend on several factors.
We've started preparing the final fry pond for use... It's been a long slog to expand the number of fry ponds, and now, finally we have 6 fry ponds!
