guroko percentage

[dongha lee]

i heard from the breeder that showa's guroko comes out percentage is not
only dependes on their parents. is it true? i can't understand.
what circumstances will do?
this spring, frankly, my hope showa's guroko percentage is only about 0.5%!
so i am to change males next year.
before long, i will post my tosai ginrin showa's picture! please wait^_^

[bekko]

Please, is there another word for "guroko"? I can not find the definition.


steve

[dongha lee]

as long as i know, guro means "black黑" and ko means "children子("fry" in koi word)". so it means "black fry". also it is limited only showa style. thank you.

[MikeM]

guroko = kuroko, as in Goromo/Koromo.

Dongha Lee: Others personally experienced in Showa breeding would be better to respond to your concern. Based on my reading, that is a very low percentage of black fry. Seems the experienced breeders get better than 20% after culling for kuroko and eliminating the obvious bent back deformities and the like. I sometimes wonder, however, if the newest lines of Showa with a goodly mix of Sanke genes are really comparable. Perhaps a lower percentage of kuroko comes with the improvement in Sumi? I'd be interested in the observations of those with some knowledge on the subject.

[dick benbow]

Dongha,
Anything below 20% is a low percentage.There was a shiro breeder for my Friend kentaro sakai in Hiroshima that only produced 20% black fry irregardless of the shiro males introduced. But quess what? the quality was so good they kept her for many years and only sold her when they decided ( at that time) to get out of the shiro production.
My showa breeding program last spring with the same female but new modern male from kawakami had a 50% black fry spawn. This batch looks pretty good coming up.
I don't focus so much on the numbers as i do the quality of a few individuals.

[MikeM]

Dick: Did you observe a difference in the percentage of kuroko between the different males?

[dongha lee]

then it means, circumstances( by the lunar calendar, temperature, atmospheric pressure, etc) will not influence at all?
only depends on parents setting?
and one more, goromo has a black fry? i didn't experienced but want to know.
thank you.

[dick benbow]

I have never bred goromo, so can't help you. I've culled a few in my life once they got 40 days old and older. By that time they look like kohaku. By the end of the culling, the better one are the ones you have to look twice to see they are goromo, as they look like kohaku. Some times the sashie will be dark as a tip off.

[dick benbow]

Mike the first male was about 20 % black and the koi were so-so. The second
was half and half and there are some prosing looking ones now. I like to wait a few more years to hang on to these tosai to continue to see if they develop of fall flat!

[MikeM]

Thanks, Dick. The individual experiences of breeders helps piece together an understanding of Showa. I cannot figure them out on a "logical" basis. In some ways, it would seem the best Showa lines would have a high percentage of kuroko, since bred to be Showa. On the other hand, the mixing in of Sanke to get higher quality pigments would seem to lead to lower percentages of kuroko, but then re-crossing with other sanke-influenced Showa would seem to head back toward higher percentages. Articles in the Japanese magazines give mixed impressions. But, sometimes a breeder's decision to change parent sets because of low kuroko percentages seems to reflect the difficult economics of having too few kuroko fry to get a decent volume of good post-culling koi to market, rather than because of the quality of the few tosai left after a season of culling. Wish the English translations were more clear ... but maybe it is just the Japanese tendency to be vague when in disagreement.