percentage of kohaku from a spawn.

[ranskye]

hi, i bred a crop of kahaku and at 30 -50mm long and about six to eight weeks old i found that i had over 65 percent orange to red all over fish and 30 percent all white fish and less than 10, maybe 5 percent or even less white fish with red patches.

is this the norm? or have japanese breeders improved on these ratios?

[ranskye]

is also like to add that many of the all over red orange fish were a dull orange, they looked almost softer fleshed like they were a bit on the weak side. i dont think they would even be red fish when they got older. the same goes for the white fish, some were very dull looking. out of the white ones with red patches a lot of them had a clear white nose with various amounts of red patches down the back, these are the ones i kept but out of about 50,000 fish i think i only was able to keep about 300 fish that showed some promise to me. i would like to know is this how it goes with japan fish as well or do they get many more white with red patches to select from than i do?
my kohaku line has been in australia for well over twenty years now and i am thinking that maybe the japanese breeders have improve the ratios.

[bekko]

I can't speak for the Japanese breeders, but 5 to 10% sounds about right. Most of those with two colors will have a pattern which is too heavy, too weak, or grossly unbalanced. Maybe 1% will have a decent kohaku pattern. If it was sanke/showa you would hope for 0.5%.

-ste ve

[ranskye]

thanks a lot steve, its a shame i hadnt taken photos of these before i sorted them to compare with what you guys might get.
though i have sent the keepers to a pond which i will harvest in a few months time and show here so i know if i should bother to go through the massive process of importing some new japanese breeding stock.. ive got all the paperwork but its a big job to fill it all out and actually do it and i wouldnt like to find that i hadnt made leaps and bounds by going to the trouble.
incidentally i did breed some showas in the next pond also but my red aint the best so i crossed em with some kohaku too and hope to find some better red coming out in the offspring.
those ones i will be able to show some pics because they are still less than 30mm long and need harvesting in a month or so. i have noticed a fair few black fish all over and numerous black with a clear face too. about the only fish on the farm that give a good high percentage of decent offspring are the yellow ogons!

[dick benbow]

it's all in the numbers.....if i have a pair of breeders with a small % of high class patterns
that produce the higest quality tategoi, I still end up with the same $$$$$ as the guy that gets twice as many nice pattern koi but a small percentage are quality.

A very famous breeder friend of mine used to have a shiro utsuri female that only produced black fry at less than 25% (average closer to half) but the quality of young
retained was so high that the lower percentage actually was easier to manage in water and food (provisions) with less labor involved.

As Steve suggests, Sanke are the most difficult to get anything from....if your not satified with the patterns you might try a different male, just keep in mind that by breeding a favored three step with another 3 step, the young are not influenced by the number of steps on a parent. If I had a quarter everytime I have been asked to select a quality pair of tanchos to breed for a new learning breeder, I could buy you , I and steve a pretty nice meal!

looking forward to seeing your kohaku/showa tosai....

[ranskye]

hi dick and thanks for the help.
you shouldve seen how many bung head smash mouth square jaw shusui i got last crop i did the blue fish! i wouldve made you cry.
since then though ive put a paddlewheel aerator on the fingerlings and now i can feed twice as much without getting bad water and no oxygen nights. those scales down the back dont show for way too long. i went through a heap of fish choosing for colour up the side and clean nose and then i found i had to hold so many and just wait and wait for the scales to show. still ive got some goodens about the place but its such a shame to have em get 6 inches long and find they have dodgey placed scales.

as for the kohakus, today i saw a six incher swimming around and i swear i know its mother. she has this less than desirable white on her nose. its a bit see through pinkish like and the red seems to be compromised by the lack of pigment depth too.
still ive got some rather decent gin kohaku this year. the red is pretty bright.
ive got one thats about ready to spawn next season so ill see if i am making any progress in them.

ive also noticed some of the offspring that maybe coming from a male that has that veiny look in its white down its back. its a quick grower but not so nice to look at for the redish veins running down its back. this whole genticis is tricky to understand. its hard to even gauge if progress is being made or if its just farming or selection techniques helping out.

funny you mention the tancho cross tancho. someone i know wanted me to breed them two together. i said they wont produce more tancho and laughed at the suggestion but i never tried it to prove it myself but it just makes sense that you get a big splay of everything. now if in japan they arent getting 80 percent red and white fish in the inbred lines after ten odd generations then it shows that its not very easy to lock something like that in when dealing with koi genes.. i think plants are easier.

yea i wonder if the stock has improved much in the last twenty odd years or if its just all a numbers game. i wonder if they have improved the gene pool for the red and the crisp lines and the shape or if they are now just able to go through many more culls and have it go well for the selected few from there on.

what makes me wonder even more is that they have crossed in those magoi jumbo fish that arent even pretty and still the get such beautiful offspring. now one would think that should take you back many years in your breeding for the other things but it dont seem to matter. so maybe its more numbers games than anything else. maybe they are getting half the kohaks to select as they ussually would but getting just as much money still anyways too.


i wonder what the f1s if that cross would look like across the board..

in this it may be that a lot of the breeders i have now were just not meticulously chosen from their batch. so appear rather substandard.
i mean already i have found fish as good or better as what i have but i dont really expect it is much to do with parent selection as it is to do with me choosing better babies to grow out.

having said that i still would prefer some of the fish you guys have access to even if its just a mind thing.. ahh to be able to put a crop of todays japan fish against a crop of my breeders and see if there is much difference. i guess there must be some by the sounds of it in that some breeder farms are known for the age at which the red may do something.
unless that of course is determined by the breeder choosing what patterns/colour looks promising in the future to him on that particular fish and its not so much the bloodline.

i imagine a lot of farms our crossing different lines though and getting better results.
that may be also hybrid vigour and a bit of a broader pool to choose from also.

do you guys think these things become more stable after that???

all very interesting thats for sure.
ill be sure to get you some photos to make it more fun.

[dick benbow]

and see if you recall with your shusui, a dark spot on their forhead at an early stage that went away by the end of summer.

One of the things that i have been interested in following is the impact that KHV has had with the exchange and availability of brood stock. Breeders with an establshed line that they understood were always trying new combinations to see improvements

[ranskye]

my memory is not that great dick, the other thing is that id sell most of the shusui out that didnt appeal to me but i would sometimes keep some with a small amount of colour on the nose in the hope that it may fade. the ones with lots of dark down the nose and between the eyes in particular would be rejected and sometimes the ones with small scattered specks i would keep too. only because i have noticed a tancho bekko, (actually the one in my avatar) that had some more red appear on its nose and then grow bigger and then back off again. it was no where to be seen prior to that. but now it seems to be staying there. other than noticing that i cant say i pay enough attention to patches changing all that much except i notice if they begin to break in the middle on the kohaku. i dont seem to notice much merging except for in the showas. they seem a bit more like chameleons, to me atleast!

im not sure if your meaning in regards to the shusui the spots that seem to be underneath the skin like a ghosty spot or what some people have reffered to as a brain spot or the direct dark blue colour on top of the skin.

khv does tend to make people very very scared and cautios.
who knows how it will change things until later on when someone looks back.
i mean if some farms have had it and its well known then i doubt those genetics would be chased after for now but people would just steer right clear. others might select from known KHV free farms instead and others may just never bring in any new fish to totally eliminate the chance. its definately got part to play in koi genes for the future. i still dont even know if there is risk in using male sperm but i havent followed it a lot yet as it wasnt something i needed to know about till now.
thats one of the many many things that i may have to look at when applying for an import license for some new breeders. what farms are clean, what tests would be considered near foolproof etc. i think thats going to be the hardest thing to be addressed so that i may satisfy the government that my import would not put australias disease free situation at risk.
the farms without khv may well lead to those genetics spreading around more frequently than otherwise would be the case. i certainly wouldnt be asking for fish from farms known for khv. it may be that i only ask for some near frozen milt..if anyone knows for sure that it cant spread that way? i had read once that that was speculative but some time has passed since then.

[ranskye]

ok guys, i went through some of my cages of 30mm feeders and found some fish of the style i was talking about. i hold these back instead of culling to the fridge so that i can have small feeders on offer year round. these fish were actually bred in september which makes them around seven months old now. the ones i selected for release are about six or 8 inches now and free swimming so i cant get pics of them.

my main poitnt is to show the dull orange style that make up about 60 percent of the crop. i cant say for sure but i think i recall breeding only kohaku and shusui in this pond.
so i think the all over orange fish come from the kohaku line i have.
the first pic shows the red and white fish and you can notice that it is nothing like the orange.
then ive taken a few pics for dick to show the type of face that i keep in the shusui.
the palm tree was a mistake. ill try find the other kohaku pic i had.

[ranskye]

heres some more pics, dunno what that blackish marks are on that ones head..
i dont recall any black coming out in any of the other fish though i do have one kohaku parent swimming around that has developed a small black dot fleck on its back in the last year or so.