Image courtesy of Scott Purdin.
Seining for koi fry in one of the mud ponds at Purdin Koi Farm.
Driving along the backroads of West Baton Rouge Parish, through the rural community of Erwinville, it would be easy to pass by the Purdin property without a second thought—dismiss it as just another family farm, some sort of agricultural venture. You’d never know that the 131-acres are home to more than sixty of the finest Arabian horses in America.
And even if you were to wander the property, observe and admire those majestic beasts—you might miss, without a second thought, the other highly specialized creatures that call this land home. Towards the center of the property, about a ten-acre tract houses a series of barns and buildings, all of them filled with a collection of highly-engineered “ponds” (which, to the average person’s eye, resemble something more akin to lap pools.) Inside swim hundreds of the most meticulously bred koi fish this side of the Pacific.
Image courtesy of Scott Purdin.
A female kōhaku bred and raised at Purdin Koi Farm.
When Scott Purdin, age seventy-seven, talks about how he came to be one of America’s premiere breeders of koi, the story takes many turns.
It goes back to when, as a young man, he moved to New York with no intentions of ever returning to his hometown of Baton Rouge. It pauses within his aversion to high-exposure public life as a successful young writer, but swirls around that very success—which brought him a certain amount of economic prosperity. The story focuses on the nature of art, the subjectivity and magic of it, which has always guided Purdin’s choices, and follows him into the romance that would eventually draw him back to Baton Rouge. And no matter how many different ways he tells it, the story of Purdin’s relationship with koi always circles back to reflections on what he considers his greatest work of art: his daughter, Amanda.
The first fish was for Amanda, after all. A pet, chosen for its stunning black pattern by the then-toddler from the aquarium store, and dropped in the garden pond.
By that time, Purdin had ceased his itinerant work as a writer in the film industry to be permanently near Amanda and his wife, Suzanne Turner. “I felt an incredible attachment to the child,” he said. “Everything had changed; I couldn’t leave for work anymore.” He was spending most of his time with his daughter, but, Suzanne felt he needed an outlet, a pursuit, something for himself.
He started seeing a therapist who worked in the Jungian tradition—focusing on achieving wholeness by exploring the unconscious mind. When she asked him to try and identify a passion, something that thrilled him and brought him joy, the very first thing that came to mind was that fish, swimming in the garden pond.
The therapist encouraged him to follow that instinct, that interest. So, he dove into the literature, attended conferences, and even traveled to Japan to study the subject in its place of origin. “I got into it,” he said. “I got interested in the fish, but it was the language, the Japanese language, that really caught me.”
In particular, the Japanese word, kōhaku, captured his imagination. The word references the very first koi, which emerged in the 1820s in a small village outside of Ojiya City as a genetic aberration of the carp fish, which were grown by rice farmers as a winter food source.
When a farmer discovered one of his carp had an unusual color pattern of a persimmon red (kō) and an eggshell white (haku)—colors recognized as good luck in Japanese culture—he decided he would keep it. “He did not want to throw away good luck,” said Purdin.
To keep the fish alive through the cold winter, the farmer built a pond that was half inside of his house, half outside. Over the years, whenever he noticed another carp with distinctive colors and markings he enjoyed, he’d add them to his special pond. When they eventually bred, the farmer hand-selected the fish he found most beautiful.
“He was doing it strictly for his own commitment to the red and the white, this pursuit of luck,” said Purdin. “He was doing it for his own eye. It’s all based entirely on this man’s idea of beauty. This is the way that art happens. You can’t really describe the artistic process and how it works. An artist paints something, they put it up, they begin to love it. Like I love my daughter.”
The farmer’s neighbors eventually took notice of the colorful fish occupying the man’s ponds, and began to try their hands at breeding the “lucky” fish, themselves. “Suddenly, the whole village is doing it,” said Purdin. “And these are not what you call educated people; they seem to understand art from the inside. And they’ve decided this one farmer has the eye of the artist. They’re all working to improve that particular kind of fish.”
This is when they gave the fish the name, kōhaku. Red and white, joined together in the kanji (the Japanese pictorial language) by the symbol for “artist.” “This defines kōhaku,” said Purdin. “For these people, if you’re calling something kōhaku, you’re talking about a work of art. You’re not talking about a fish.”
Image courtesy of Scott Purdin.
The river pond at Purdin Koi Farm, where some of the operation's finest fish are raised to grow and potentially be selected for breeding.
By the time Purdin was considering raising koi, that precise art had, in a great sense, been lost to time, overwhelmed by the bulk of the modern ornamental koi industry—which ultimately became a commercial endeavor throughout Japan and the rest of the world. Though initially conceptualized as an art form, today the koi industry focuses more on producing pretty fish that sell well than maintaining bloodlines or creating the artistically ideal expression of kōhaku.
It was shortly after Purdin’s first trip to Japan that the dream became real for him. “My wife thought it was all just crazy,” he said. “But the therapist seemed to like it.” He purchased two acres of property near the Mississippi River in Glynn, Louisiana—where a bousillage cottage sat beneath an orchard of ancient pecans and walnuts, oaks and mayhaws.
The original plan was geared more towards passion than profession; the property was a place where Purdin could experiment with raising koi while his wife exercised her talents as a landscape architect. While Turner adorned the yard in old roses, muscadines, and iris in the traditions of early Louisiana gardens, Purdin built out several concrete tanks.
“At that point, I was going to import fish and sell them,” he said. “I didn’t really think I was going to get into the art of it too much. Because, doing art with koi, you’re not just going to buy paint. You have to have really high-quality fish, and you have to know what you’re doing. It all seems impossible to the normal human being, and it should.”
So, he operated as a small-scale koi dealer for a few years, making some money, enjoying his little sanctuary beside the Mississippi. But exceptionalism was waiting just around the corner. “I got very lucky with what happened next.”
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At the time, an American-born Japanese breeder was attempting to start a koi breeding operation in the States. His family had been breeding some of the highest-quality kōhaku in the world in Ojiya for four generations.
According to Purdin’s telling, the breeder had started a partnership with a man in San Antonio using some of his family’s best specimens. But when a mistake at the San Antonio operation resulted in the death of one of his finest brood fish, he drove to the facility in his Datsun 280Z, and packed up as many of his fish as he could. “So, now he’s on the road, and he realizes, ‘What am I going to do with all these fish?’” said Purdin. “He calls the only person in Houston that he knew who was in the koi business, and that guy knew me, and knew I had a facility. He told him, ‘You should drive to Louisiana.’”
Within hours, the man was standing on Purdin’s doorstep with some of the finest ornamental fish in the world—some of them true kōhaku. “This is what put me in the breeding business,” said Purdin. “It was like looking at a Rembrandt. It took everything to the next level.
The fish Purdin ultimately bred from those koi, which encompass a significant portion of his stock today, are what he describes as “approaching a work of art.”
Image courtesy of Scott Purdin.
A female showa, bred and raised at Purdin Koi Farm.
Today, Purdin has expanded his koi operation to the second location in Erwinville—which shares property with his Arabian breeding operation, Boisvert Farms, founded purely out of his daughter’s love for horses.
The facility includes an intricate system of barns and man-made “ponds,” each engineered by Purdin (after he took LSU courses on the subject) with complex filtration systems drawn directly from a natural well, precisely monitoring water parameters such as temperature, pH, and ammonia. Kyle Loveland, an aquaculturist who oversees the operations at Purdin Koi Farm with his wife Alyssa, explained that to care for fish is truly to care for water. Each pond holds between 3,000–100,000 gallons of water and houses dozens to hundreds of koi, divided into different levels of development and grading, with sexes kept separate to avoid accidental breeding. Most are roofed over to avoid contamination from Louisiana’s frequent rainfall, some with a semi-translucent material to allow the sunlight in, which can help the fishes’ colors grow ever more vibrant.
“I don’t like to say that I’m in the koi business—unless it’s to the IRS. I’ve always been an art person. And when I say ‘art,’ I’m talking about this strange connection we have to inanimate things, or animate things. It’s profound."—Scott Purdin
The facility is designed with a distinct Japanese influence, maximizing serenity through minimalism and natural materials. Kyle pointed out that most of the tools used onsite are imported directly from Japan, including various nets, buckets, and spawning mats—which are specially designed for koi and their sensitive, vulnerable scales. Alyssa described catching a fish in the water and moving it as like moving a painting that you don’t want to damage.
Inside the main fish house, where the prized brood stock are kept, a second story library is stocked with Japanese literature on koi, as well as meticulous records for every fish raised onsite. From here, massive windows overlook the ponds, where the Lovelands can monitor their fish as they swim and feed throughout the day.
Image courtesy of Scott Purdin.
A female kōhaku bred and raised at Purdin Koi Farm.
For years now, Purdin has hired aquaculturists like the Lovelands to oversee the business of Purdin Koi Farms, which today is considered the premier breeder of American-bred koi. Kyle came on in 2022, following an apprenticeship under a koi farmer in New Jersey and a period operating his own business building koi ponds. Besides his knowledge of koi specifically, he also brought an interest in aquaculture husbandry and genetic breeding, with a specialty in snakes—allowing him to work side by side with Purdin on the careful process of naturally breeding koi.
This is the only part of the business that Purdin remains directly involved in, the part he cares most about, the art—the creation of something extraordinary.
“I don’t like to say that I’m in the koi business—unless it’s to the IRS,” he joked. “I’ve always been an art person. And when I say ‘art,’ I’m talking about this strange connection we have to inanimate things, or animate things. It’s profound. It’s like with my wife and my daughter. It seems to have captured me, in all aspects of my life. It’s consistent. And it still happens with koi. Watching those fish, it’s better than being in a museum. It’s like being in Cézanne’s house.”
He remains heavily involved in the selection/culling process, which begins as soon as the hundreds of thousands of koi fry hatch in the spring and continues until the best two females of every bloodline are selected as brood fish, with even fewer males making the final cut.
“It’s ruthless,” said Purdin. “But, for me, it’s instinctual.” Culling is a necessary part of any koi breeding process, not only to narrow down the finest specimens, but also to ensure the fish that remain in captivity have access—within the limitations of the farm—to the space and nutrients necessary to grow to their fullest potential.
Image courtesy of Scott Purdin.
One of the early rounds of selection at Purdin Koi Farms, in which superior specimens of fish are identified and set apart.
“If you keep too many, the water quality is not as high,” explained Purdin. “For a lot of people, that’s fine. They want to put as many fish in the tank as possible and keep them alive and make more money selling them. But for me, they’re missing the point.”
The fish that don’t make the cut cannot be simply released into the wild, either. They breed prolifically and are known to cause extensive damage to native ecosystems, as well as to outcompete local species. So, most of the rejected koi are carefully disposed of.
If they make it to later rounds, though, some fish that meet a certain, still exclusive, quality threshold—though perhaps not high enough for breeding—are made available for purchase. Collectors, wholesalers, pond builders, and competitors in koi shows travel across the world to select these premium fish from the Purdin farm. Kyle and Alyssa will then tend to these purchased fish and allow them to grow out to size in the ideal conditions offered at the ponds at Purdin’s original, smaller, property in Glynn.
Purdin Koi specializes in breeding Gosanke koi, which includes the three most prestigious varieties of koi: sanke, showa, and kōhaku. When Purdin and Kyle go to select the fish they will keep as potential breeders, they are looking for fish with a high quality of skin, vibrant color, and interesting patterns—and most of all stability, assurance that this fish, while it will grow and change, will remain a thing of beauty over the entire course of its ten-, fifteen-, sometimes thirty-year lifespan. When Purdin bought the property, he planted persimmon trees around the mud ponds, where the fry spend the beginning of their lives, so that he could use the fruit to precisely measure the virtue of a young fish’s color.
“I’m looking for exceptional fish,” said Purdin. “And sometimes, I like fish that are flawed and that someone wouldn’t buy, but I know they’ll be a great brood fish. I see the things that are important, but with flaws that make them special. It’s the art of it.”
