Timid, aren't you. LOL's
I thought I had sniffed out the 'sentiment' behind the one line comments. I have faced this kinda thing for the last 23 years in the hobby. And it intensified on the internet. There seems to be a real desire from the dealer community ( and from misguided fellow hobbyists) to put me in a box as being one dimensional in my education. I mean, it seems like a 'need' to tear my credibility down in order to build the taunter up?
You might recall another anom suggesting I was just a tourist while in Japan and have always been kept in a bubble and was therefore clueless in my understanding of koi and the Japanese system. It was certainly what that anom wanted to be reality, but it was not reality. I have been to Japan and on the inside of things more than most American dealers that go to Japan. Sounds outrageous I know. But true. I have seen known dealers and breeders over there and they were clueless as how to act and where to go. The silly comments that come out of them when they get home are absolutely priceless. Yet I never mock them about this as everyone has to start somewhere. Yet it is they who are in a bubble created by their their Japanese agent/translator.
The key here is to buy from the same guys over many years but NOT to be with the same handlers. And at some point it is important to strike out on your own. And also to cultivate relationships with important hobbyists in Japan who fast track your education and open doors to certain breeders. What I mean here is you need to free ypurself from the distribution system at some point. Any one can do it and many have. I just happen to one of them and one that frequents these koi boards. It just takes, time, networking, money and perserverance. Thos process includes the school of hard knocks- being burnt by breeders, dealers, locals and you own raw untrained eye! And you always need to remind yourself that the system of koi distrubution is fundamentally flawed and dishonest, but that the koi are innocent and are the point of the exercise. And of course, that time will sort out the few trust worthy people over there. Everyone who has really gotten to the inside of the industry knows what I'm talking about. I often imagine there is a poster of me in some small out of the way Shinkokai home office similar to the wanted posters you see in the Post Office.
I seem to be getting this treatment here again as I'm not a koi breeder. And although I am now doing my first dedicated and focused breeding in years, do you really think I have never bred koi before? After being in the hobby for 23 years and after going to the same breeders to see my fish grow at the farms for 15 years?
The first 7 years of koi keeping for me was about culling random spawnings. That's seven years. I learned what not to do and the reality of why koi cost as much as they do. The limits and eventually the lesson of " you can't get a silk purse from a sow's ear" was drilled into me over that period of time. In the eighth year, I removed all males. I avoided breeding my own at that point and went to the experts to watch their breeding experiments. I watched friends like Joe Z also breed every year for those 23 years. I was watching him breed koi in a garage for heaven's sake, BEFORE the creation of the Famous Quality koi farm.
I have not put the fish together to 'do the deed' in many years. But I have culled, watched experts cull and watched those surviving the culls, grow. I have studied skin development from fry to promising tategoi. Now here's an immodest response- I do know more than the random back yard breeder about koi. NOT HIS koi, but koi as a group and how they develop. Sorry if this sounds pompous. It is not meant to be.
So to bring this all home, I got amused and a tad devilish with my questioning when you suggested that my world would be twirled when I first bred these sankes. I'm sure I'll learn a thing or two ( I hope so!), but will my entire 23 year education be altered by raising my own spawn under truly controlled conditions? Hardly. I'm sure it would appear that way to someone who was new and doing it for the very first time but I am doing this against that 23 years of constant exposure to koi, koi breeding and even the 'hungry years' of the learning curve.
And do not delude yourself, raising junk from junk only teaches you about junk. It does nothing to raise your perspective. That is a well known fact among those that talk the talk and walk the walk.
Sorry for this rather obnoxious post, but I had to get it off my chest. Koi keeping does teach humility. JR
06-03-2008
Quote: 
Linear Mode
Similar Threads 
