Scottish koi club

All Scottish Koi Club members are invited to Tartan-Koi premises in Cumbernauld on Wednesday 29th December at 12pm to see the harvest of 2010 koi fry.

Hi Mick
looking forward to seeing you guys again, roll on the 29th.
Regards Allan

Hi every one
over the weekend i will post a report on our day with mick at Tartan koi
regards allan.

On the 29th December I travelled up to Cumbernauld to Tartan Koi. Mick Gaven had invited us to look over his Koi fry but the weather was extremely cold with ice forming on the mud ponds even in polytunnels. Mick rightly decided to leave the fry undisturbed, Mick with the help of Willie Morland netted the tosai pond so myself and John Anderson could assess the progress of Mick’s tosai. With two blue bowls set up Mick and Willie started to catch the koi which gave us time to check the standard of the fish.
80% of these fish were of a very high grade, the body structure, beni and sumi quality were very good, the white skin had excellent lustre. 14% were of a good standard only let down by pattern issues; of these some had excellent body structure with the potential to possibly become parent stock. The remaining 6% has some minor body shape issues.
If Mick has other events like this I would encourage any of your membership to visit, the insight of knowledge regarding bloodline traits is invaluable. To see the different body shapes, the different beni qualities, the different sumi styles and depth of colour and most of all skin quality and what defines excellent skin quality at close quarters was and is a privilege.
Mick has three tancho sankes with very good body shapes, the tanchos are good with very good beni, the white skin is very good, the sumi quality and placement is excellent, almost atarashi in quality with excellent lustre.
Three sankes were really high grade, the sumi, beni, white skin and pattern balance were excellent. Some of the other sankes from a different bloodline were very good but are at a different stage of development.
The showas as with all young showas will take time to develop but the balance of pattern was very good.
I would like to see Mick try the takahashi female with patch the male kohaku again one of the siblings has excellent skin and beni qualities.
After finishing with the tosai we broke for lunch, we then went to Mick’s parent’s stock pond bowling the males and females. Here the traits of the siblings could be spotted in the parents, one of the sakai females has excellent body shape but as Wilma pointed out the pattern will not be to anyone’s liking, but it’s the body shape that Mick is after. It may be possible to use one of the male kohakus to redefine the pattern gene. Mick has an Ikarashi showa female which may spawn well with the male shiro, which has fantastic white skin and fukarin.
Mick bowled a stunning asagi female which I am looking forward to seeing the offspring, also a tancho kohaku which may also go well with the male shiro.

I would like to thank Mick for the invite and the chance to see his breeding programme. Also a thank you to the Scottish members for a good day out.

Regards
Alan