Little tosai in a floating mesh net was a bad decision. My thought was that the little koi could enjoy the benefits of better water quality, could be fed differently, and out of the breezeway quarantine tank for another incoming set of tosai. The larger koi did not seem too interested in the net or tosai when they were added to the pond. One week later, the floating mesh net in the water became the love zone. On Sunday morning, pond builder found eggs all over the netting, foam on the water and one dead ai goromo. I’m sure our ai goromo was either hit by one of the larger koi during spawning or panicked within the netting. Not a happy life for this tosai. It had a rough trip across country (probably should have been dead after its twirly swim upon arrival), seemed to recover, only to die in the big pond.

While it’s sad to lose a koi, every koi keeper loses a few over the years. Some years you can lose several koi for all sorts of reasons. It’s probably best not to get too attached to them. Earlier this year, PS Koi (Russ Peters) was in Japan for a few weeks to buy some smaller koi. I had already bought larger koi in the fall so I didn’t really need any small ones, but you see the photos online and they become impulse buys. You know the odds of a tosai turning out to be a champion are nil but I enjoy watching the koi grow. I decided to buy “the replacements.”

When we lived in Minnesota, we had a few mishaps with various koi. I lost a small hariwake within an hour of putting it into a larger quarantine tank. I think I had used a hose that I had touched with my garden gloves. I had been using some sort of chemicals on the plants and I think a trace of it was on the hose. One hariwake poisoned. So I’m going to give another Hariwake a try. I purchased two kikusui tosai because we lost two in Minnesota. One committed suicide by jumping out of the quarantine tank and the other got stuck head first in the filtration system. I have not seen larger kikusui koi in shows so we’ll see what they look like as they age. Maybe they don’t look good as mature koi…or maybe they are stupid and continue to make bad decisions as they age.

The heiseinishikigoi is definitely something to just watch. I have been pestering Russ for a yamatonishikigoi (a metallic sanke) – and no one seems to really want to produce them. However, on this trip he found a heiseinishikigoi which is the doitsu version of the yamatonishikigoi. Greater than 50/50 odds that this koi will probably look weird as it ages but it should satisfy my curiosity. These little tosai are less than eight inches and will have to stay in the quarantine tank much longer than the group I purchased in March. The koi were shipped UPS overnight which saved me a trip to the airport. I’m all for getting a box of fun delivered to the front porch. Happy to report no problems in the first 36 hours.

The broody hens are now put into time-out during the day. I read or watched a video somewhere that crating the brooding hens might snap them out of their behavior and start laying eggs again. The two hens seem a little angry at me when I put them in the blue coop. They have no access to the roosting/nest box area – just the open area, water and food. It’s like chicken detention center. In the evening, we let them roam anywhere within chicken land.

The little chickens look like they are already outgrowing the new coop we just built for them. We will be moving it around the grassy areas because they end up eating and scratching anything green. They are getting faster at trying to slip by you when you open a door.

Haven’t had to water the vegetable garden much with all the rain but I’m excited to see everything growing. We have a lot of French breakfast radishes right now and there is only so many you can eat each day. I may need to rethink how much I will plant of these next year. Maybe the chicks will want some radishes – they love our lettuce.

Then there are the DIY projects. We decided to get rid of Chinese timber bamboo. In fact we are getting rid of all bamboo except for the Moso bamboo and one small black bamboo plant. I decided to repurpose the Chinese timber bamboo as framework for the back tomato garden. Last year the chickens discovered this garden and were in it everyday poking holes into tomatoes. Looks kind of wonky, but I’m sure it will keep the hens out.

The other DIY project was a new ring feeder for the koi. The square one that we had made out of PVC was fine except a lot of food would escape. So I purchased a hula hoop and pool noodles to make a feeder with a fatter edge to keep more of the food in the ring and not racing to the skimmer. Not sure they all love the new feeding ring but at least half of them have no issues with it.

Here’s hoping I’m not writing about more casualties for a few years.