DAY 4 -BEPPU KOI FARM

Beppu Koi Farm is a small farm in Matsuyama owned by the family of a friend of mine Takaharu.Takaharu was a top employee of Sakai Farm for 8 years and still holds very good standing at Sakai-he actually sold them one of their breeding females-Shining Star.

This year he invited me to attend the harvest of their jumbo koi-it was a good oppertunity to pay him a visit and see what his big koi looked like this year and what kind of prices he was charging.

Some of his jumbos are bred by him-with Sakai parents- and the others are koi bought from Sakai and grown on.

We ended up harvesting 2 ponds.The first being the jumbos and the next his Sansai Yamabuki ogons-he does amazing lemon yamabuki ogons!

By the time we got to the pond the level had already been lowered considerably and a lot of the koi could be seen swimming around.

As the level dropped,they started to "herd" the koi towards the deep end of the pond-by the outlet.

Once they were all there then they put a net around the koi and brought them to the bank.Then the koi were put into kiddies swimming pools and then loaded into a plastic container.

A crane then lifted the box up to the truck where they were loaded into a vat.

Once the truck was back at the farm the koi were individually bowled,measured,photographed and recorded.

Some of the koi:-

An 87cm Yamabuki-

 Amazing fukurin-

Two great Sankes-80cm and 76cm.

 80cm Kohaku-

 89cm Sanke-not for sale,parent koi-

76cm Kohaku-

 85cm Sanke-

 87cm Sanke-

Finally harvested his Sansai Yamabuki pond-all came out well over 70cm!

After spending a great  day with Takaharu and his family,I flew off to Fukuoka and Ogata Koi Farm for their Open Sales and Auction.