A week in the life of a koi farmer (wc 6_3)

Bradley joined us on Monday, and the timing is perfect.  We've spent the week selecting through tosai, splitting the koi between tategoi that will be grown on to nisai for autumn harvest, and tosai that we are presenting for sale this spring.

It's been a huge task, and the extra help means we've made rapid progress.

That means we are in a position tomorrow (Friday 10th) to announce the release date for the new season tosai, our sales approach and how you can get hold of the new season stock.

Our customers know Byer Koi Farm as a family run business, so it's important to us that you get to know Bradley and I have a Q & A with him which I'll write up in a longer blog soon, and for this blog I have a series of pictures from the work so far this week showing Bradley at Byer Koi Farm and also some of the koi we're bringing through for release very soon.

Here's Bradley and I selecting through one of the 11 growing on ponds.  This one housing a mix of koi from mid season spawnings last year that are the medium sized growers from their respective spawnings.

And, the next tank along... netted... with the larger koi from those same spawnings.

Some of the medium growth rate koi being released this spring.

A bumper harvest!

I was happy with this seine net of koi.  Our Opaline line Mukashi Ogons !  Large, Bright, Shiny, with great colour.  I'm very happy.

Our doitsu ochiba's are one of the stand out varieties from last year's spawnings.  We have good numbers, with over half being released imminently in our spring release.

I bought a few sock nets back from Japan.  The premium quality Matsuda nets are second to none when it comes to control and build quality.

Doitsu Ochiba was one of the new varieties we took on last year following the surprise success of the few wild card Doitsu Ochiba's we produced the year before.

They've been spread across a few of our growing on tanks, and this batch have been grown on with some of our kohaku.

And finally, one last picture of our treasured Mukashi's!  And... after a week of harvesting, Bradley is now well versed with our range of seine nets !