I think it has been more than two years I have tried to breed Cow Ranchu but with no success. Not only it is rare to obtain the expected color, to get a decent body quality in the offspring needs lots of luck. Most of them are defected, either totally missing the anal fin or having ugly backbone. I was tempted to give up many times.

Last week I lost the first Cow Ranchu I bought due to disease. It was a handsome Cow.

I was thinking about trying to breed him one more time, pairing him with his own offspring that show decent color. But now that hope is lost.

Well, after so many failures, I currently have four offspring. One does not count, since it is such an ugly fish though the color is decent. I will just keep it as back up. I do not take her picture. The other three are promising, though they are far from perfect. All of them are female.

This one is the best:

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The black marking is visible clearly from the top. Based on my experience with the parent, the black marking will continue to grow. I am excited to see what she will become. Hopefully this fish is fertile. It will take another two months or more for her to start producing eggs.

Another one is this:

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The tail of this fish is too wide and flat. This tail type hinders the fish to swim well. The curve is not smooth enough. Yet the color is lovely. Yes, it has red color, which make her unqualified to be called Cow. Yet, the black dots look beautiful. I am certain this black dots will also grow.

I have a suspicion that this fish is not the offspring of my first ranchu I posted above. During this two years I bought some more Cows from different lineage. And they look different from my first purchase. I am sorry I have not taken pictures of the 2nd type of Cow Ranchu. From this observation, I conclude that there are more than one lineage of Cow Ranchu in the market. This 2nd fish looks closer to the second lineage I keep.

If we examine the 2nd fish closely and compare it with the 1st, we will see that the eyes are different. The 1st fish has totally black eyes, just like her father. The 2nd one has normal eyes. The behavior of the black markings look different, also. The black marks in the 1st fish tend to be whole, forming a large block, while the black marks of the 2nd fish tend to be in the shape of dots. Those are two differences I observe.

The third fish is interesting:

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Yes, this is a wild color metallic ranchu. And this is also the offspring of Cow Ranchu! I begin to speculate that the making of Cow Ranchu might involve metallic scale fish! Perhaps a wild color one, or even black ranchu! Well, this is still my guess. Hopefully my future projects will give me a more solid answer.

So much is the update of my Cow Ranchu project. At this point, I can not do anything other than waiting for them to mature sexually. I will post the update. Wish me success.