Today was day 1 of the final mud pond harvest on the grounds of Koi Acres, Scandia, MN. It’s a lot of fun to see the koi come out of the mud ponds and if you own one, it’s always a relief to see it come out alive and then check out the growth. When the koi first come out, they will look stressed. While the pink tone usually resolves in a few hours, some koi might stay stressed a few days. All koi are carefully checked over by Devin and Mikki for injuries and other health concerns.

Sidebar: Devin and Mikki Swanson have been sourcing high quality koi for customers throughout the midwest for several years. They are at the koi shows and always willing to help out customers with koi health problems and questions. Sadly, they will be leaving for sunny So Cal in a few months. Their new company is called Demi Koi and will be based in the LA area. I’m going to miss these two but have faith that I will see them somewhere around the koi circuit.

Here are some photos at the harvest. The harvest visitors tend to be the usual suspects – die hard koi kichi types. We spend a lot of time looking at the koi, catching up on what’s happening koi wise in their area of the country and sharing advice on koi keeping. Mikki’s parents, Michael and Gleci Hernandez were in town to help out with the harvest. Some of the harvested koi are for sale and there is still some inventory of tosais on sale.

 

 

As I was leaving the harvest, I decided to just walk by the sale tanks of tosai. I’m trying to avoid buying the tosai because it’s often a waste of money. Buying a tosai is akin to gambling. Anyways, I saw two sanke koi with kuchibeni – red on the mouth which resembles lipstick. I happen to think kuchibeni koi are cool. Someday it would be fun to have a pond that had a bunch of kuchibeni koi – kind of a little joke. Most koi keepers are working hard on having the perfect kohaku, sanke, show or shiro utsuri while I’m planning on amusement. Everyone has different goals…

Here are my two new koi:

We also had to move the three largest koi back to the upper pond. Poppy, Miyu and Lily were just not enjoying their time in the lower pond. They really like having space without someone near them and we believe the smaller koi were annoying to them. Of course it could be that they were irritated by something in the water since they were jumping around a bit. I’m wondering how the group is going to do in the indoor pool this winter. We’re heading back to Koi Acres in the morning to pick up a small RDF for the winter pool 🙄

Lots more koi keeping stuff going on this weekend…