[tewa]

Hi guys

This is one topic I am quite interested in because as I mention earlier Australian koi are probably at the level of Japanese koi around that time.

I know that australia lacks a few very important things.

1) Number of breeders
2) Number of mud ponds
3) The introduction of magoi blood
4) Heated facilities

Was it because of the introduction of heated facilities in winter that helped breeders to identify the faster and better quality koi within the line and thus helped refine the genes for the next generations.

Was it the improvement in food, breeding techniques (artificial spawnings)?

Besides the famous matsunosuke line with magoi blood, other nishikigoi have progressed to jumbo sizes say in kohaku (momotaro eagle 98cm, sakai of hiroshima's donguri and sakura lines) and showas, omosako shiro utsuri in the 80 plus cm range.

Is it just due to the continuous breeding of miliions upon millions of fry and selecting those with a bigger bone structure that helped evolved into todays jumbos.

Here in Australia besides the handful of commercial farms that breed koi (none of them produce high quality large koi for retail), most koi are bred in the humble backyard, most are around 5 to 10 ton breeding fry ponds a few are lucky enough to have 45 to 90 ton pools that are converted to ponds and some breeders with lots of space have a few 60 ton to 100 ton dams. Still nothing in the scale of japanese mud ponds.

Can you guys suggest things that the japanese breeders have done to evolve their koi to help the aussie backyard breeder?

TEWA