Outing to Platinum Koi
Taking to the Road - Route 62
Contributed by Erik de Boer
Due to Janice not making the event, I am left with having to write the report, so hopefully I will not bore you all. Here Goes.
Our first event of 2006 has come and gone and it seems we are starting off like we ended, with a really great event, yes I am blowing my own trumpet, no one else does.
A few of us decided to make a weekend of it and spent the weekend or part of it at least in Bonnievale. David, Tracy and kids went up on the Friday, then Jacques and Natalie, Myself and Sandy, Andre and Karen, Deon and Andre, and of course all the kids, joined them on the Saturday at Night Sky caravan park, just down the road from Platinum Koi. What a great little caravan park, nice little chalets on the banks of a dam with canoeing and a small play park for the kids, as well as a few springboks roaming the park to join the myriad of birdlife on the dam.
All this of course lead to many photographic moments and the intrepid photographers in the society, David, Jacques, Sandy and myself never missed a beat, and I reckon 100’s of photos were taken, as can be seen from the contributions here.
Saturday evening was a very festive evening with Arnie and myself being lumped with doing the braaing and Tracy leading the ladies in prepping the side dishes, by the amount of meat we braaied it look like we were catering for the whole town of Bonnievale, the rest of the crew utilised their time by making severe contribution to the Bells and brown bottle foundation.
Sunday morning saw us up early with the photographers trying to capture the light. After packing up, we headed to Platinum Koi in what must have looked like a mass invasion, and we were just the people that slept over.
We had hoped to be the first to arrive, but when we got there, Adrian Fouche and his father in law were already their having spent the evening in Mc Gregor. I think he had the same idea as us, get their early to get first choice of the fish on sale, but Mack had different ideas, he promptly told us, first do the work, i.e. the dragging, then get the rewards, nasty man!!!!
Shortly afterwards the convoy arrived trailing behind Rob, was very relieved that they all managed to keep up, as Rob has a reputation for having a heavy foot, Carols must have had her hand on the hand-brake…mmm.
We then all gathered under the shade as Servaas gave us a run down on the day’s events, and what was expected of us. What it basically boiled down to was that he wanted us to experience the process of dragging as he and the staff experienced it.
This
involved filling bags with water, carry them to the dam, and then doing the
dragging, after which the bags had to filled with the babies, and then taken
back to the tanks, when the culling selection would take place.
We would be involved in two draggings, one being a dam with 45 day old babies, which would be a first cull, and then at a second pond where the fish were 110 day old and would be a second cull.
Servaas also gave us a rundown on what to cull and what not to cull.
Mac then took us up, yes up, all the way up to the 45 day old dam, yes it was right at the top of the farm, when we eventually got their, Mac called for some volunteers to come down and unroll the dragging net, so down some of us went, must say at first glance it looked like their was nothing in the water, but their were lots of spectators on the banks, with Colin brown having joined the team of photographers. Well I had my son Kyle on the one side of me and just ahead of him was Johan Serdyn. As the net unrolled and we started moving into the water, and it got deeper, Johan moved back up the line as he had his denim shorts on hadn’t banked on going that deep, so Kyle and I ended up at the top of the net, with the other volunteers taking the sides in.
With Mac shouting instructions, we eventually managed to bring the net in closer to the shore where the net started taking on the shape of a half moon, and as we got closer, you could see the little fish, starting to mill about in the net, and as we got closer, the little blighters started bumping into our legs as they tried to escape, quite an experience.
Their must have been 10 000 (Ok maybe not that many, but still a helluva lot) of these little guys swarming about in the net.
Mac then got the guys with the water bags to come down and the youngsters that had helped us drag, started filling the bags under the watchful eye of Mac and the rest of us, the kids were really getting into it, what with scooping up 100’s of babies throwing the frogs (platanna’s) back and pouring them into the bags. The bags where then carried back down where they were put into the selection ponds.
Here Platinum Koi’s ladies started showing the members how to select the fish for culling, what to keep and what to throw out. I think this was the hardest part for us, as we all saw potential fish, albeit not good ones, being tossed aside, but we also realised that this is a necessary part of Koi farming, there is no way they can do this any other way.
We then moved onto the second pond and thank goodness this was more on level round with the holding area, and we didn’t have to trek up the berg.
The process was pretty much the same here, the only difference being that the water was a reddish colour, whereas the other pond was more turquoise, interesting, maybe Servaas can let us know why this was. While dragging you could feel that this had older fish in it, as almost from the beginning you could see the fish trying to jump out the net, and then when were getting closer, you could feel them bumping into your legs as they tried to get out of the net.
