74 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



With all the phenomenal profits made by highly successful fox farm- 

 ers, we must not overlook the fact that there have also been many and 

 sometimes heavy losses, due to unfavorable locality, poor management, 

 ignorance or failure to understand the necessity of constant watch- 

 fulness. The failures are not so likely to be published as the successes. 

 Vendors of capital stock of fur-farm companies see to it that success 

 is duly and thoroughly advertised, but no one is specially interested 

 in advertising failures. As in most lines of business, it is a great suc- 

 cess under proper management and favorable conditions, otherwise 

 only a moderate success or a failure. 



In addition to fox farming, mink and skunk farming have been 

 successfully accomplished, minks have been bred in captivity for sixty 

 years, breeding stock during the American Civil War having sold at 

 $30 a pair, while in 1916 it was said that there were more skunk breed- 

 ers than all other breeders of fur-bearers combined. 60 Other species 

 have been tried with more or less success. Muskrat farming consists 

 mostly of utilizing swamp lands of little value for other purposes, as 

 the most economical method, and beaver farming is largely a mat- 

 ter of re-introducing the animals into favorable territory from which 

 they had been exterminated, and carefully protecting them from poach- 

 ers. Fur farming of some sorts may be profitably carried on in con- 

 nection with general agriculture in some localities. A fair income may 

 often be derived from simply trapping the wild fur-bearers about the 

 farms during the right season, protecting them from molestation dur- 

 ing the remainder of the year when the skins are not prime and the 

 animals are breeding, thus "turning pests into profits." It may not be 

 out of place here to suggest that deer farming and the raising of 

 other wild non-fur-bearing mammals under control may be profitably 

 carried on, perhaps in connection with some kinds of fur farming, in 

 suitable localities. 61 



The so-called "Persian lambs," broadtails and karakuls are domesti- 

 cated animals and so, of course, the whole supply of their pelts, so 

 much used in the fur trade, is the result of fur farming. The raising 

 of these animals is already well started in the United States and will 



60 Dearborn, Fur farming as a side issue, Yearbook U. S. Dept. Agric. for 1916, 

 pp. 489-506. Ashbrook, Mink raising, U. S. Biol. Surv. Leaflet No. 8, 1928. See also 

 books by Laut, Jones, and Ashbrook cited in other footnotes to this chapter. 



61 Lantz, Raising deer and other large game animals in the United States, U. S. 

 Biol. Surv. Bull. No. 36, 1910; Deer farming in the United States, Farmers' Bull., 

 No. 330, 1908. Roseberry, Experience in raising Virginia deer, in Jones, Fur farming 

 in Canada, pp. 118-119, 



