A week in the life of a koi farmer (wc 31_10)

Another very busy week here at Byer Koi Farm, both with internal work and also customer visits.

Our growing on tanks are all fully stocked and each one is now on a 6 weekly selection cycle which basically means I need to select through roughly 2 tanks per week to keep on top of it.  This week I went through half the 'Opaline' Mukashi spawning, and the second Kohaku spawning which is off the Sakai FF female, an offspring of S Legend.  Plus a few of the doitsu ochiba spawning that we filled some empty space with in the kohaku pond.

Here are some of the best few from that spawning, likely to be kept here until nisai and make available for sale autumn 2023:

We're loving the bottom up pattern style on this doitsu ochiba.

The mukashi's are off our 96cm female we call 'Opaline', and they're growing well and showing a very strong type of body which is exciting:

A range of Mukashi Ogon colour types coming through, which we expect will provide lots of choice for customers in the spring.

Customer visits are still on, and we've seen a few people this week.  Most of our £60 and £120 tosai are no listed on the website but can be viewed in store, and one customer make some very savvy picks from the £60 tank this week:

Other koi of interest this week have been our Gin Matsuba's:

And the variety looked at most this week have been our Showa's.  As well as the £60 tank showas, plenty of nisai showa's have been in the bowl and some  going to new homes.

They looked amazing together in the inspection bowls and i grabbed a few pictures while they were there:

This round bowl of Showa's are all from our LMC line.

And in this rectangular bowl, a range of LMC and MGS line showas.

These are all listed on our individual koi for sale page, here: 

https://www.byerkoifarm.co.uk/collections/koi-for-sale

Koi can be filtered by variety, and for showas, here's a pre filtered view:

https://www.byerkoifarm.co.uk/collections/koi-for-sale?filter.p.m.my_fields.variety=Showa

The sumi (black colour) on many of the Showa's has already developed a little in the short time since we photographed these nisai in early September.

It's interesting to compare how they look now against those early September photographs which you can see on their listing on the individual koi for sale pages.

Between Amanda and myself, we do everything around the farm.  With all the growing on tanks full there's also more filter cleaning and repairs to keep up with.   We also have the big off season clean up list, and this is basically a long list of lower priority tasks like site repairs and improvements that we build up during the season when we prioritise time to production and, we're starting to make slow but steady progress through that list now.  This week we dealt with the long outstanding job of clearing out the waste drainage system - and I can tell you that was the least glamorous job in months!

Next week, we have the remaining Mukashi Ogon yearlings to select through and more off season clean up and 2023 preparation work.  Plus, CEFAS (the fish part of DEFRA)  are visiting for one of their twice a year checkups.

Finally, a short video with clips from the week: