Mid May Update - Tosai sales weekend, Spawning Prep, South Hants Koi Club visit

Last weekend was another busy one at Byer Koi Farm, as we hosted back to back visitors who came to see our jumbo tosai release. Some returning customers, some new. And, the weekend ended with the South Hants koi club visiting for a tour.

Here are some pictures from the weekend:













Finally, we have donated a Mukashi Ogon to the BKKS for their koi auction at this year's BKKS National Koi Show. We selected one of the more unique colour variants that we got from that spawning and extracted from our nisai tank where we've started to grow our tosai on to nisai. This particular one is 34cm at 10 months old.. it's going to be a grower!

Now... onto spawnings ...

We start our spawnings each year in early May, and are usually onto follow on spawnings by the end of May. This year is panning our quite differently. Our original fry ponds are ready, and 2 of the new 4 are also ready.. but, 1 still needs rectification work from the storms a few weeks ago and 1 still needs lining and it’s possible we may need to adjust the shape slightly which would require more digger work.

Most of our koi farming time this month has been spent on sales activity; preparing and attending the Young Koi Show, and our tosai release weekend, and frankly, the weather has not been as warm or as sunny as I need it to be for best use of the fry ponds – so there has been less of a need to make early progress on the spawnings.

In previous years, we have had to wait until late May and one year, it was mid June before we were able to secure our first good spawning of the season. So this year, we are still well inside that window – and with the bank holiday this weekend, it gives us a chance to get going.

The plan is to start with 3 spawnings over the weekend; 2 kohaku spawnings and 1 of something different – and I’ll work out what variety that will be on Saturday morning when I go through our females and examine them to find the best one for spawning at that time.

For the Kohaku spawnings, I will aim to start with optimised pairings And hold Trudy, Marilyn and our new Okawa for mid or late summer.

It’s fingers crossed time, and I’ll let you know how we get on!