300 Department of Conservation of Louisiana 



This should be done on a unit basis and it has been our 

 practice to recommend an area 100 feet long by 47 feet 

 wide, making the area 1-1 0th of an acre. To arrive at a 

 per acre estimate all that needs to be done is to multiply by 

 10. The enclosure should be set on a typical piece of marsh- 

 land, where it can either receive a natural flooding by water 

 every so often or else be artificially flooded when necessary 

 by damming a stream and raising the water level, or by 

 building levees or dykes so that the nomal rainfall can be 

 retained, or excessive rain waters be drained off by creating 

 spillways or sluice-gates in the dykes. 



Directions for building such an experimental enclosure 

 as worked out in Louisiana can be found in the outlines 

 under the illustration of our experimental plots on page 

 281. 



'Rat Ranching in Maryland 



One learns many things by comparisons. This is as true 

 in the fur business as in any other line of endeavor. As 

 the conditions in the Maryland tide water marshes come 

 nearer duplicating the conditions found in Louisiana coastal 

 marshes, it seems permissible to detail something of the in- 

 dustry in that state, although the habitat of the muskrat in 

 this part of the country bordering the Chesapeake Bay in- 

 cludes sections of Virginia and Delaware and New Jersey 

 have like conditions. Again, in view of the fact that no 

 surveys of these particular marshes have been made, quo- 

 tations will be given from observations by Mr. E. Lee Le- 

 Compte, state game warden for Maryland.* 



In this territory the open season for trapping the fur 

 animals is from January 1 to March 15, a season that ap- 

 proximates Louisiana's 75-day period for legally taking the 

 muskrat. In these eastern seaboard states it will be under- 

 stood by the Louisiana reader that the ice conditions do not 

 permit trapping during the middle of the winter ; therefore, 

 it is necessary to set open the dates as they have been des- 

 ignated by the Maryland law. In 1928, it is pointed out 

 that, due to ice conditions, January was a very unsatisfac- 



•Lecompte, E. Lee, The Muskrat in Maryland, State Game Dept. of 

 Maryland. 



