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| We offer a Koi Rescue Service. |
Koi-keepers have livestock? By Todo When we think of livestock we think of farms, ranches or poultry ghettos. Our elementary school memories elicit visions of a rural family up before dawn watering the herd, slopping the hogs and letting the horses out to pasture. One thought that does not come quickly is the same family heading out for a week at Disney World. After all, leaving the critters could be disastrous and getting someone to tend the flock for days on end might be difficult. Let’s leave our bedraggled rural brethren and visit a stereotypical neophyte urban koi keeper. “Tell me good fish fancier, do you keep livestock?” We ask. “Of course not,” he replies. “We have a cat, two dogs and the koi.” “Then what do you do with your animals when you head out for that week in the Great Smoky Mountains?” “My sister takes the cat and we board the dogs.” “And the fish?” “Ahhh...” And now we have hit it. The farthest thing from the new ponders mind in the days of “Hey Martha, let’s have a pond” is that having fish means having livestock. Our goldfish and koi have value which must be protected and tended daily. We do not have the barns, combines and milking machines, but there are a host of mechanical devices that provide the living environment for our fish. Granting that vacations are an integral part of our lifestyle, let us examine some solutions to leaving our fish at home. The first that comes to mind is join a goldfish or koi club. This resource can not be over expressed. Ponds are complicated arrangements of water, pumps, and filters. Who better to look in on your pond than someone who understands this web. Failing the first solution the next best way is the same trick the farm family uses, find a friend, neighbor or Uncle Joe’s family to come over every day and feed the fish. If this is your method, you are well advised to give your pond-sitter an extensive tour of your setup, including notes, diagrams and the phone number of whoever you call when things go wrong. There are mechanical feeders you can buy to keep the food coming, but to date there are no robotic minders for your pond’s apparatus. Hence, leaving your fish to tend themselves is a dire gamble. |
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