Small Batch Release – Friday Night Koi Release

Spawning Season Is Approaching

We're in the final throes of preparing for spawning. Every year we try to spawn a little earlier, and once again, we're aiming to run the spawnings roughly in the middle of May. There are advantages to this of course, as the weather is generally warmer and that just makes the whole process much easier. And as usual, there are pairings we plan to run that I’m very excited about — and this year is no different on that score.

At the moment, it looks like the week after next, although if everything lines up we may get underway towards the end of next week.

The preparation work behind spawning is extensive and takes up a huge amount of time. Added to all the normal husbandry that has to be covered each week, this is one of the busiest periods of the season for us. Between preparing parent fish, organising ponds and systems, maintaining water quality, feeding schedules, and all the routine farm work that still has to continue in the background, the days disappear very quickly at this time of year.

It’s one of the more enjoyable parts of the season too. There’s always a sense of anticipation around spawning time — not just because of the specific pairings we plan to run, but because it marks the beginning of another year class of BKF-bred koi.

This Week’s Small Batch Release

Because of everything going on behind the scenes at the moment, we genuinely weren’t sure whether we’d have time to run one of our usual Friday night releases this week.

One of the reasons we pushed ourselves to still get a release online though is because we've had quite a few customers recently telling us how much they enjoy the Friday night releases themselves.

It’s been genuinely nice hearing people say they now look forward to jumping online at 8pm on a Friday evening to see what new koi are being released that week. Over time, the releases have developed a bit of their own rhythm through the season, and we know many customers enjoy following along even when they’re not necessarily planning to buy.

With that in mind, we felt it would be a shame not to put something together this week, even if it ended up being a smaller release than usual.

And to add to the fun, the flash on my DSLR decided this was the perfect week to finally give up...

So whilst this week’s release is much smaller than usual — just 12 koi in total — there are some really enjoyable fish amongst them.

Sometimes these smaller releases are actually the ones we enjoy the most. Rather than cataloguing large numbers, it becomes more about selecting a handful of koi that caught our eye and deserved to be released now, rather than held back for another few weeks.

There’s a nice mixture of varieties in this group, including some really good BKF bred Shusui nisai with attractive patterns and great colour quality. Quite of a few of the koi in this batch stood out whilst photographing them, and I suspect they may generate a fair bit of interest once the release goes live.

As always, all koi will be sold on a strictly first come, first served basis once the koi are released onto the website on the koi for sale page, at 8pm on Friday evening.

Preview videos can be found below.