New Doitsu Ochiba line, in development

Some of the most sought after ake nisai we have coming thorough for harvest this autumn are the Doitsu Ochiba's we produced by chance from our Yagengi Doitsu Karashigoi female last year.

The patterns that really interested us were the bottom up style patterns which are a cross between the 'sui' style of a shusui, and an autumn leaves on water style of a traditional ochiba.  The bottom up style reminded us of an autumn setting the the Lake District, in the UK; so we set about a breeding programme which will take some years, perhaps 5-10 years with the aim to stabilise that pattern style and be able to create more of them, a little more easily.

To help nudge us forwards, we invested in some additional female brood stock over the winter, from Yamaju; to broaden our pool of Doitsu Ochiba genetics and we spawned one of them successfully earlier this season.

You may recall some of this from our keynote speech earlier this year (https://www.byerkoifarm.co.uk/blogs/blog/spring-22-keynote?_pos=9&_sid=d0b1f54c6&_ss=r )

I've just completed selection of that spawning, and one thing is even more certain that it was before; it's going to be a difficult project!

We have some promising Doitsu Ochiba's coming through though, and here are some of the most promising ones across the few styles that we seem to have generated from this spawning.

And, a few pictures too:

Another interesting 6 week old Doitsu Ochiba, with great skin and an open patterns and also a good size for the spawning too

When our ake nisai from last year's spawning are more mature, we hope to use some of those koi in the development of the line; but for now, this output from our new brood stock is helping to move us forwards and learn more about this interesting variety.

Other news; fry pond 4 which we seeded with a karashigoi / chagoi mix, basically failed.  We put in a few 10's of thousands of hatchlings, and can't spot any after a week or so.   Sometimes it happens, when the cycling isn't quite right , so we have re-seeded the pond with some of the hatchlings we kept back and had brought on to a slightly larger size.  Another few 10's of thousands went in, and it's fingers crossed time.  We put in two bags of hatchlings, and in this video you can see the second bag being floated and a few free swimmers from the first bag coming along to investigate!

Finally, we hope you all made it through the recent heatwave successfully.

Our sales room and tunnels achieved very toasty temperatures!  This spare role of insulation gave us some quick to erect shade and helped to give the koi some protection from the extreme weather.

The heatwave ended with some really moody sky's on Tuesday evening, which was difficult to capture well, but hopefully this gives you a feel for it: