Welcome to Koi UK Ltd.

Having played at breeding koi for a few years, during 2003 a plan was hatched to become a full time koi breeder, not just another Koi breeder in the UK, but the best. The aim is to in time produce koi of a standard which can stand side by side with the best produced in Japan.

At the start of 2004 construction of the koi farm began, many of my ideas for the farm are new. Having raised koi in mud ponds for a number of years it has become apparent that our summer temperatures are lower than in Japan, thus mud pond temperatures are too low for good growth of fry. This has been addressed so I can now run my mud ponds up to 30c, with an ideal temperature of 24c-25c.

Based in Somerset, ground water or river water is not of good quality, so I have installed a purification plant to reproduce water to the chemistry I wish, any bugs and nasties are a thing of the past. I can raise my fry in water of the same makeup as in Japan and then this can slowly be changed back to a chemistry nearer to that found in the UK. This makes the koi much stronger and able to cope with the UK better than koi imported directly from Japan.

Another of my ace cards are my Oyagoi (parent koi), they are of extremely high quality. I am very fortunate, as I have become very good friends with a number of Japanese breeders. Because of this friendship I have been able to buy some very special koi. Breeders I have purchased special oyagoi from include Momotaro, Shintaro, Matsunosuke Isawa, Omosako, Sakai Hiroshima,  and more. These are not just koi from these breeders, but very special koi and I am most grateful for their help. 

At the start of 2004 I did not realise what a mammoth task I had taken on, building a koi farm and be in full production within the same year. It took me until June to get the first mud pond ready for spawning, this was a lot later than I had planned. I carried on finishing mud ponds as quickly as I could but the year was flying by, unfortunately I was unable to spawn many sets of parents as the summer was coming to an end.

Although not producing as many fry as I'd planned, results from 2004 have been very encouraging, this bolds well for the future. Hopefully one or two of these may be of show quality and may be seen at a later date around the show circuit. This is one of my dreams, to have my own produced koi competing against the best Japanese koi in the country.  

Time is always very short nowadays, being a koi farmer takes far more than an 8 hour day and it's a 7 day a week job. As time goes by I shall build this side of the web site, it will contain as much information about breeding koi as I can put in. Also to be viewed here will be my parent koi, many breeders hide they parents away, but I am proud of my Oyagoi, they are from jumbo stock, their offspring should grow to very large sizes and that is something which is not common for koi bred in the UK.

Maurice Cox.