Asagi Breeding 2004

[dick benbow]

Culling fry can involve different methods for different color varietries of koi. For example:

Shiros and showa-first cull at 3 days old
sanke's after a week
kohakus-once a month
yamabuki after two months-same as asagi

if you tell me what your looking for color variety wise I can give you some guidelines.


the mission of a breeder is to get the numbers down as quickly as possible wqith water quality concerns.

with my shiros i was able to get rid of 80%
showas 60%


certainly all things equal to cut your numbers down in half with the first cull is important.


during the monthly culls that follow the initial separation you look for things like body shape, crooked heads or spines, mis shaped fins, intensity of sheen and pattern.

I try and take about 50-125 tosai into the greenhouse in the winter.
I could probably take 250 but I have a point to make and that is I can create quality koi so i really separate hard.

I will try and get some baby shots as they develop. right now I am trying to keep up with the masses and get thier numbers down. most pics right now would show you a yellow or dark fry with no other distinctions. wait till they get up an inch or two and we'll have more of a teaching tool.

meanwhile let me know what your looking to breed/simbetsu

[jacovors]

Hi Dick,
This comming season I plan to spawn one set of Kohaku, one set Sanke, one set Yamabuki and one set Kikusui. I am also digging two more mudponds next door to accomodate the extra fry this year.
It will be my first try at Kikusui and from what I have read I will cull after one month and look for mostly pattern and lustre.The female Kikusui is 75cm and the male a doitsu platinum. I tend to cull almost all plain white and only keep the Doitu Kikusui offsring.
I agree with you that in culling Sanke I was surprised to see some developing sumi only when the temps droped.
Below is a pic of the Kikusui female I am going to spawn this year.

Thanks for the detailed descriptions during you're spawning and all youre help.
Jaco.

[MikeM]

Dick: About the showa fry that are discarded in the first cull because not black ... I'm curious as to what they grow into. Have you ever grown out a couple just to see?

[dick benbow]

Jaco,
Cracy thing about kikusui, I have seen color come back to a previously white tosai? let us know how you do. It's nice to have someone to compare notes on. i appreciate you digging more ponds. the problems I am having now are all shortage of water problems!!!!!

Mike,
I'm sorry i do not know what they turn into. i was taught what to keep and never looked back. I like the inquiring mind tho...and in a way i'm kinda doing that with some asagi tosai. I selected three -5 inchers from a breeder in japan. one has red up the lateral line and over the nose on the face. another has no red anywhere. the third has red just at the base of the pecs,pelvic and anal fin. Since I only have verbal learning with them,
and i've a mass of them coming i wanted to see the difference. will the one with no red develop some? will the one that's perfect hold that. will the one with red up to the lateral line already be done? there is verbal/book learning and there is practical application. On the one I'm passionate about, I'm looking into...ask me about that one mike this fall!

[Sanke56]

Dick culling for conformation at 3 days is amazing. How can you tell if they have a crooked head that soon or poor fins etc. So if I have Showa for instance how would I do the first culls at such an early stage. I know I put about 25 in another pond the first week after they appeared and they grew much faster and were 5-6 inches long by the end of summer but I just am not sure how to cull them so soon.

[JasonS]

... nevermind, started own thread...

[dick benbow]

When culling showa or shiros, the black selection is only to get your efforts off with the right koi. the light colored ones are not worth trifling with. the actual viewing for mis shaped heads missing fins etc doesn't take place until the koi is more 3-4 inches long. soirry I didn't make that clear.


with yamabuki, at the 3 inch stage your looking for sheen/irradescents
and properly sized pecs. many times they are smallish or mis shapened.

[dick benbow]

The seminar went well today. enjoyed myself while sharing some knowledge. Took the last issue of Kb along to point out the tosai article for those who wanted more indepth info on selection. Think Brian should see atleast one new subscriber from Washington state!

the weather here in the pacific northwest has been rainy and cool. the koi are out in thier unheated growth ponds and to be honest, the growth isn't much with the cooler temps.

The sanke spawning diddn't take so am back to back up parents. will get the kohaku done here shortly as soon as weather warms.

the baby shiros still are so much bigger. they diddn't grow much lengthwise during the week but thier little bellies are really extended.
they've really been eating! when the water warms back up they should bolt lengthwise. some of the asagi's and longfins are gonna be moved to a giant lake for growth next week. it'll be a full year before i can get my hands on them but will be interesting to learn what that kind of volumn of water will do.

well that's about all for my blueberry tails this weekend. when Dan B gets back on his email, i'll take some pics of the babies and get him to do the posting.

took a look at a coupla nisai shiros in the growth pond. my best one is a cull from a showa breeding. the white and black is extraordinary. it has orange on the head which continues to lighten. It's gonna be some koi (female) when the orange disappears.

[jacovors]

Dick,
Thanks for the update. What do you think went wrong with the Sanke spawning? Do you use only one male to one female?
I still cannot decide to spawn Sanke or Showa this year so it seems a good idea to have a backup set available.
Thanks
Jaco.

[dick benbow]

was the first time I used the male and female Jaco. Lots of eggs and male (1) was mature. Then weather cooled so quickly after the eggs were laid that i believe the falling temps influenced the negative results as i couldn't hold the heat as I should.

I quess because I want to know the influence of one male's genes, i use only one per spawning. probably isn't the most effective production wise, but one male does less damage than two on the female and i'd hate to try and quess which one of two or three did or diddn't influence the young!