Saturday 26th April 2008.
Guess what the first thing I did when I arrived at the farm this morning?
It's a long walk to the other end of the tunnels when you're an expectant father! We have chagoi eggs everywhere, but unfortunately no eggs from the yamabuki, although things looked good yesterday afternoon, nothing happened overnight.
By 8.00am the chagoi set had just about finished, as usual she has managed to spray eggs all over the place, thousands of eggs 20cm above the water line!
When I put a set together, they normally spawn within 24 hours, if they don't, I leave them for another 24 hours, this is often enough. If after 48 hours there are no eggs, the set will be rested because the time is not right. My koi spawn if they are ready and want to, although in the past I have injected koi with pituitary extract to learn the art , it's not the way I work.
So this morning I went onto plan B, this is why I try and spawn two sets together. The female chagoi and one male was loaded into the transport tank in the van, the other male was placed into the floating net containing the yamabuki set. This is just a little 'gee up' for them, the male chagoi has been hard at work all night, then all of a sudden there's another female! This normally works, he was left with the yamabuki until this evening when he returned home with me. The others were brought back this morning.
Although I was a little late on the shutter to catch the action, eggs can clearly be seen sprayed up the net in the back of this shot.