Infertile male koi

[Roy Butterton]

Hi
I was introduced to Koi Bito by a e-mail friend Jaco and I have enjoyed reading all the information. I am desperate to find an answer to my problem. We are going into our koi breeding season here in sunny South Africa and I have to shusui males who are about six years old and didn't produce sperm last season. What can be done to get these beautiful koi fertile.
thanks
Roykoi

[shiromujigirl]

Roy? How do you know? DId you put them with females? Did you squeeze them?

[jacovors]

Welcome Roy,
You chose the right board to ask that question.I think a stay in a mud pond should do the trick unless there are something very wrong like the koi might be female, anything is possible.
Jaco.

[jacovors]

double post

[Roy Butterton]

Hello Koi Lovers
Thanks Jaco and Shiromujigirl for your imput. During the last breeding season I put a pearl Shusui female full of eggs with a males pearl Shuhsui and to my dissapointment all the eggs were not fertile. I must admit I did'nt milk the male before hand. Jaco, read in the Living Jewels book about putting males in a mud dam but I understood that it was to help them regain their spawning instinct and not to get their sperm back. I could of misunderstood the article. I did put the pearl Shushi and my large Ki Shushi in a mud dam for about two months but had to take out again. I wonder if there is'nt a hormone injection that can help fertility

Regards
Roy

[Sanke56]

Roy
Did you actually see the males involved in the spawning?
Even though there are eggs it does not necessarily mean the females are fertile you could try other males and see if the fertileity is in the eggs
Could there be water problems preventing the eggs from developing?
have you spawned koi in this water before has anything changed
Can you do a microscopic examination of the eggs and sperm to evaluate it is there a vet that can check things out
There are a lot of possibilities
The other males could also train your new males that can help too
The new guys may not know what to do
etc etc
One of my spawnings produced eggs this year but I saw no fry
The other spawning is normal
were the males not ready were they in experienced what happened?
I just saw the eggs I did not see the whole process I will mix things up differently next year
It usually works fine but these are complex biological systems

Someone once told me that if you have a problem you will always loose your best koi how often does the end up being true?

[jacovors]

Roy,
It's true what Sanke 56 says. In worse case the fish could never be productive.I think try and milk it now and see if you can get any milt.
Jaco

[dick benbow]

Just some additional thoughts. Most males when active physically in the spring in anticipation of proceation will have sandpaper feeling gill plates.
this spring check these koi please.

many professional breeders keep parent stock separated. females in one pond and males in another. in this situation I find the sandpaper effect less existant. in ponds with both sexes the sand paper feeling is more apparent.

After spawning I have some of my males that the entire body is course
and rough in addition to the gill plates and with 48 hrs returns back to "normal".

I am not aware of a male fertility shot, just female to rapidly ripen the eggs. ( I do know of one breeder who thinking his ginrin cha was ready to
spawn continually shot her until he discovered it was a male) I don't think he'll ever live that one down. to look at the koi I must confess that it looked female.

One thing many are not aware of, a good spawning male is not necesarily
one that is built like a show fish. Many times hobbyists will try and breed their koi to rid a female of eggs. The males are so obese and out of shape they don't co=operate. because they can't because they are in bad shape physically.

if it were me I'd try and carefully squeeze some milt out and if no luck
slip them out in a healthy grow pond.

I hope some of my thoughts might be helpful....

[Roy Butterton]

Thanks to all of you for your advice. This is still early days as Sept is still around the corner. I will keep you up to date. I heard of some bad news today of one of our cities (East London) top koi keepers who had 40 koi on display at a building complex which closes during weekends and there was a power failure. All died and they were above 30cm in size and of different varities.
Hope it goes well in the whole koi world
Roy

[estanque_koi]

Hello Roy,
Is not always possible to extract milt for some males, at least whithout risking to damage them.
You can anesthesize the fish in an aerated bolw adding drops of oil of cloves. Then, wrap the male with a damp towel and gently squeeze the vent to extract milt.
One thing you can do to stimulate the process of sperm formation is to inject the fish with Ovaprim (from Syndel). I have used this synthetic hormone and it works very vell with males, they produce copious milt.
You can buy it on line. Follow the link below and search "spawning products"
http://www.syndel.com/home.html
One word of caution, one of the "males" I injected was a Sanke that I bought from a japanese breeder the previous year. He assured me that the fish was a female, but was hard to believe. Growing on, the koi retained a clear male body shape, and I thought the breeder was wrong.
Well, when I anesthesized the koi (assuming he was a male) and tried to extract milt what I got was a bunch of still inmature eggs!
Good luck,
Diego