56 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



and know-it-alls fervently hoping for the worst, failures and 

 dearly bought knowledge were not proclaimed from the house- 

 tops, nor knowledge given out free. In fact, long after fur farming 

 had become an assured success, the first ranches were still keeping 

 their lips sealed and shipping furs from different post offices and 

 placing returns in scattered banks in order to keep their success to 

 themselves. 



The early failures arose from : 



Mixing alien and poor blood as the foxes from Anticosti. 



Permitting the captured foxes to run wild and giving no special 

 care. 



Not knowing that the fox is a one- wife gentleman and life partner. 



Not using woven wire as an enclosure. 



Not cementing the woven wire deep enough to prevent burrow- 

 ing. 



Not providing damp-proof nests for the litter. 



Not mating silver to silver close enough to produce a very high- 

 priced fur. 



Very few failures arose from lack of proper feeding. Some 

 losses came from fur being rubbed, owing to a small entrance to the 

 burrow, or a tree so close to the wire it permitted climbing and 

 falls, or lack of shade from heat and from fright, when mothers 

 kill their young. Once when a frantic mother, who had been 

 needlessly alarmed by an outsider's intrusion, began killing her 

 young — you can imagine the feelings of the owner seeing pelts 

 of a potential value of $1000 chewed to death because curiosity 

 had lured an unwelcome intruder inside the forbidden enclosure — 

 the destruction could only be arrested by tossing a live chicken in 

 the fence. Another time, some eggs rolled in distracted the mother's 

 nervousness. 



The Belgians have a saying — "The eye of the master maketh 

 his kine fat." It is the same of fox farming. The little things, 

 which only the lover of wild life knows and notes, are the essential 

 things to success. By 1909, five-months pups were selling at 



