heads up for ochiba fans

[dick benbow]

Two years ago, I was able to get my hands on some Hosokai bloodline asagi babies. I learned a lot from watching them and reported my findings to this board. It opened my eyes to the value of Hikari Saki growth food.
Last year, my friend Dan got our hands on some toshio sakai
sanke and showa and are involved in a 3 year study.So it's a work still in proress...we're feeding a food mixture that Mat uses at nisei with surprising good results.
this year, as soon as Mat gets back from the UK, I'm gonna make arraingements to get some of his baby ochiba to raise for a year's study. Last fall while visting the harvest at Nisei koi farm, i was able to check on the mom and dads. Our NW group stayed an extra day and were treated to a look see at some of the tosai from this year's spawning with an early harvest.So if your an Ochiba fan, you'll have to stay tuned this spring for the start of another year of learning. Over the years that i have observed " the fallen leaves", it seemed it was easier to find a great patterned koi with no issues. As of late, I noticed at many dealers that really good patterns were harder to come by and that many times as this color variety grew, patterns dropped away, and maybe partially or not at all returned.
So what will happen from this breeding, and how fast will they grow? It is my intent to get back to hikari saki.....in the meantime what are your experiences with this color variety, good luck, good growth? easy to find? Hard? Share your stories " if you will"......

[HEADACHE6]

I was up there in Dec. , was this one of the female breeders ? If so , her young would grow large if fed garbage (She was HUGE ) ! LOL !

[mitten]

Some of the babies from that day came home with me, Dick. There were light ones that you favored, medium ones that looked just like the mother and dark ones. I regret now not getting any of the dark ones.

This is why. I am not sure if the color will "come in" or "stretch out" on these fish. If the color builds over time, then the soft colored ones are the gems. But what if the color that is there now is all of the color there will be? Wouldn't you then want extra now so that the fish could have enough while growing?

Of course, because of listening to you I made sure to get light ones.

HEADACHE- Yes that's is the mother. The male parent was GR Kohaku.

[MikeM]

Yep. That's Mama Ochiba. It is all the rage to improve Ochiba by crossing with Kohaku. In time it will be increasingly difficult to draw the line between Goshiki and Ochiba. In Russell's thread on the Tokyo All-Japan show, there is an Ochiba pictured with very reddish "leaves" on a very light gray background. I'd guess that it shows the effect of Kohaku being crossed into Ochiba.

Dick, it seems to me that the U.S. dealers get great patterns only on male Ochiba. ... Are the females with nice patterns staying in Japan? Or, is SouthEast Asia paying the premium for them?

Mick: So, what's the time frame for the bigger pond to hold all your "little ones"?

[Russell Peters]

Quote: Originally Posted by MikeM Yep. That's Mama Ochiba. It is all the rage to improve Ochiba by crossing with Kohaku. In time it will be increasingly difficult to draw the line between Goshiki and Ochiba. In Russell's thread on the Tokyo All-Japan show, there is an Ochiba pictured with very reddish "leaves" on a very light gray background. I'd guess that it shows the effect of Kohaku being crossed into Ochiba. Dick, it seems to me that the U.S. dealers get great patterns only on male Ochiba. ... Are the females with nice patterns staying in Japan? Or, is SouthEast Asia paying the premium for them? Mick: So, what's the time frame for the bigger pond to hold all your "little ones"?

Mike,
I was able to get female Ochibas with great patterns from Yamazaki this year.

Russ

[dick benbow]

It is my hope to get some of the darker colored patterns as well to see how they turn out.

headache, thanks for posting the Mom's pic she is pretty impressive as this submarine motors thru the school! LOL...

Mitten, glad to hear we can both contribute to this thread thru out the summer and compare notes. Will be fun!

Russ, being the globe trotter that you are, it's always nice to get feed back on who has the best what...in japan.

Chris C who posts here has a killer GR from this batch

[dick benbow]

Mike, I had to think awhile about your post.....because you know, your right, over the years with one exception I can't remember any of the ochibas with great patterns as not being male. The one female I saw came from Pan Intercorp a few years back, was a lightish blue field with good oranish color
and the pattern could best be discribed as Fawn like ( lots of dappling )

When it comes to selling their crop, japanese breeders are more than happy to send their living jewels anywhere in the world that will pay the best price for them. If you look at top shows from around the world, taiwan and Thailand do manage to get a fair share of everything.

[aquitori]

Anybody got any red Ochibas? I heard and seen Sakai Hiroshima has some really nice ones.

[dizzyfish]

take this opportunity to show the two nisai ochiba I picked up from Mat. The one with the larger pattern may be a male. The other is likely a female. The female pattern is weaker but it actually did look like leaves to me, and since I can't show, what the heck. Didn't Matt say the male parent was a kohaku in that spawn? I can't quite recall. (Information overload)
Mitch

PS
The kohaku in the middle pix came from Mat as well.

[Brutuscz]

You know it's funny that people are mentioning that some goshiki and ochiba resemble each other. I had this koi last year(heron got her ). I bought her thinking she was a goshiki....but looking at her pictures now...she was probably an ochiba. She was bred by blackwater creek, and was brick red.