Culling

Juggling is easy, you throw, you catch, you throw, you catch…
~ Perry Romanowski

The Japanese breeders consider the first day that the fries starts free-swimming as day 1. I usually cull 7 day-old fries (about 1 cm) when their faults become obvious to make the work of culling easier. Culling needs extreme patience and time, it is very important to conserve more space and food for only the best fishes. Moreover, it is very expensive to feed a large school of hungry fries craving for food round the clock. At every stage of growth, various faults becomes more obvious. As the defective fries are culled, the remaining ones are grown larger and new faults will surface. This routine of culling and growing is repeated over many iterations, eventually keeping only the best fishes in the brood. With a full time day job, I always feel like a juggler during the goldfish breeding season. The bad news is, after all these hardwork, there may not even be any good fries remaining in the whole brood! Such is the predicament that any goldfish breeder has to take in stride.

What are the faults that a breeder should cull? The first stage of culling remove major faults like handicapped fries, bent bodies, single tail and bent tail core. The subsequent culling stages look for defects which are less major. The concept of culling sounds easy but it is fundamental that a breeder must understand the specification of a good fish and have a clear view of the standard and traits that he/she is aiming for. Without which, the breeder will not know what to cull and will either under-cull the defective fries or over-cull away the good fries. Experience comes from understanding of the bloodline and studying of how the fries develop at different stages. It is consider a very good yield if we can keep 10% of the fries after the first culling.

Pictures:
1) Queuing for culling
2) 7 day old fries