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Read Ebook: Breeding minks in Louisiana for their fur: A profitable industry by Elfer William Andr
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freely. For example, if the bayou is fifty feet wide, fifteen feet of the wall crossing it can be elevated so that there will be a large-enough opening below for the water to flow. The remaining portion of the wall should be driven in the ground for about one foot, as minks will not dig under water. A farm of five acres, similar to the one just described, would cost, completed, approximately eight hundred dollars. The minks in such a farm, owing to the continuous change of water in the bayou, would always have an abundance of food. The banks of the bayou would afford a natural breeding-place, as minks usually burrow in the banks of small streams or along canals and have their young near the water. If the water in the bayou falls, wire netting could be used over the opening at the ends below the walls.
The minks I have been experimenting with have persistently refused to eat frogs. I penned one up separately and attempted to feed her on frogs only, and I believe she would have starved rather than eat frogs.
Minks can be raised in any kind of pen or cage, and water is not essential to their happiness. They are easily tamed and like to be petted.
Habits of the Mink in Louisiana
Minks in Louisiana have two litters a season, the number of young in each brood varying from four to eight. Sometimes, however, but very rarely, there will be only two in a brood, and almost as infrequently, on the other hand, there will be three litters a season instead of two. Captive animals breed more profusely than the wild, and will occasionally have three litters where they are in close captivity. They begin to breed when they are about one year old, and in captivity will raise an average of fourteen a year. Normally, they live to be about nine years old, but they will live longer in captivity where they are well treated and given all the water and the different foods required by them.
Like all other industries, the business of breeding minks for their fur necessitates an outlay of capital. A farm cannot be built without money, and the cost of one sufficiently large to breed minks profitably ranges from five hundred to a thousand dollars. Of course, a farm can be made any size and costing any amount of money; but large farms are not necessary, and it is much better to have several small farms of six or ten acres than one very large one.
After a farm is completed it has to be stocked, and the task is no easy or inexpensive one. Trappers will have to be employed to trap minks with No. 1 steel traps, as these small traps do not injure them very much unless they are permitted to remain caught too long. Those that have badly-broken bones should not be bought, as suffering will cause them to eat their leg off, in which case they will always die.
The author intends to organize a company styled the "Louisiana Mink Company," the objects and purposes of which shall be to build mink farms and to breed minks in this State for their fur.
No matter what capital is involved, or expense incurred, in entering into the business of breeding minks for their fur, the returns will be so big that this will appear small in comparison. And those who are so fortunate as to start in the industry now will, when minks will have become so rare that trapping will be unprofitable, and the demand so great that the prices for mink fur will soar higher and higher--those persons, I say, of foresight, who had the good fortune to start in the business early, will reap each year the steady advances in the price of mink fur, and be able, in a word, to command the fur market of both Europe and America.
Transcriber's Notes
All obvious typographical corrections were made. All original spelling and gramatic constructs were retained. Some images were moved to rejoin split paragraphs. Where the first letter in a paragraph was displayed in Old English font, it was assumed that represented a new "section".
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