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Rift Valley Koi .. a passion for healthy koi. When you purchase koi - how do you know you are not purchasing a fish that is carrying the KHV virus? How do you know if the fish you are buying is naturally or artificially vaccinated against KHV and is in fact not an immune carrier of KHV? Rift Valley Koi - breeders of high grade KHV free Koi In fact you have no way of knowing - neither in most cases does the retailer that is selling you the koi. KHV is a viral disease that can lie dormant in the nerve tissue of the fish concerned and will only activate under specific environmental conditions. When KHV becomes active in a population of koi or carp it normally kills the great majority of the koi in that population in a few days. All of the koi that survive from this will become potential sources of further KHV infection. The disease has been around for at least ten years and although legislation came in recently in the UK making the disease notifiable to the authorities, there is still no real control on the import of KHV infected Koi by the Government and Veterinary Services because to date there is no 100% black and white diagnostic test to verify if they are KHV infected, exposed to a weakened version of the virus to give the fish temporary or permanent immunity or if they have never been in contact with the virus. The only way to be able to give a near certain guarantee of KHV freedom is to sell koi that were bred and grown in a farm that has never had any KHV infection ever. Since 2005 we have been breeding koi in a bio-secure facility on the borders of Israel, Jordan and Syria, in an isolated and spring fed site in the Rift Valley. All of our koi are bred from a Broodstock of Japanese koi that were imported from Japan prior to the KHV virus reaching Japan. Since then no other fish have come into the site and to date we have no contact with the KHV virus. Although testing is difficult and expensive we perform extensive testing in order to be able to maintain confidence in our KHV free status. All of the koi produced on the farm are transferred to our bio-secure site in Derbyshire, and to our European agents, so that we are able to guarantee KHV freedom to this stage. We then sell our koi to koi specialist outlets and garden centres that sell these fish to koi keepers around the UK. Below are some of the koi outlets that stock our koi and from which you can buy with confidence. If you are offered koi by a retail outlet that claims that they come from our farm, and that does not appear on the attached list - please call us on 01773 880555 to verify the validity of the claim. Similarly dealers of koi that wish to stock a truly verifiable source of KHV free koi exclusively, please contact us on 01773 - 880555. Retail outlets
Trade enquiries only EMail : adrianbarnes@cpkoi.com Marketing office Rift Valley Koi Ltd( UK) Farm Rift Valley Koi Ltd ( Israel) |