FOX-FARMING 



The man Oulton, with his partner Dalton, had 

 been professional fox hunters, and bought and 

 sold tox pelts as a business. Oulton once killed 

 a silver fox, the skin of which netted him one 

 hundred and thirty-eight dollars. Seeing the 

 possibility of domesticating such a valuable 

 animal, he and his partner set about experiment- 

 ing. They built fox-proof enclosures, and 

 studied the feeding and breeding of foxes. In 

 1894 they built a ranch, and stocked it with two 

 pairs of silver foxes. This was the first fox- 

 ranch started on a commercial basis, and the 

 forerunner of what was to eventually become a 

 thriving and lucrative industry. In those days, 

 skins of the black fox were more valuable than 

 those of the silver variety and so the firm of Oulton 

 and Dalton kept their darker foxes, and gradually 

 eliminated those of a lighter shade. As a result 

 of his careful method of selection, they sent, in 

 1910, to the London fur sales, the finest collection 

 of silver fox skins which had ever appeared there. 

 The twenty-five pelts averaged one thousand 

 three hundred and eighty-six dollars each, the 

 best specimen selling at two thousand six hun- 

 dred and twenty-four dollars. The ranch from 

 which these fox skins came was situated on 

 Prince Edward Island, a Canadian Province in the 

 St. Lawrence Gulf. In the meantime other 

 small fox ranches had been started in Ontario, 

 Maine, Alaska, Michigan, Newfoundland, and the 

 Maritime Provinces. The Prince Edward Island 

 breeders intended to monopolise the business, and 

 in order to keep their methods secret, they sent 

 off their skins in small parcels, to distant post- 

 ofiices, the reports of the sales being received in 

 code. They agreed to sell no live silver foxes, 



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