Colored Chicks to Order
FRANKLY, we didn’t believe it either. But the evidence looks pretty convincing. It seems that down in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a certain experimental-minded senor named A. R. Zeno injected two dozen eggs with various vegetable dyes two hours before hatching time. When the chicks broke through their shells they were peeping happily and were apparently quite normal except that their feathers were bright blue, red, green, pink and lilac. And here they are as they arrived by Pan American air express eight hours later in New York City.
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RAISE YOUR OWN SILK
Here’s an easy, profitable, spare time job for several million Americans that can make the U. S. world’s largest silk producer.
by Roger Clay
HAVE you ever considered growing your wife’s silk stockings at home? Well, it can be done. That is, the silk thread can be produced at home, in your spare time, at very little expense—and it will pay you a nice profit.
John Ousta of New York City, a naturalized citizen of Turkish birth, with a 400-year family tradition of silk producing behind him, is convinced this country can make enough silk to meet the whole world’s demands. One-third of our farming population, raising only one ounce of eggs (30,000 to 43,000 worms) regularly in their spare-time, could do it! And a silk industry on that scale would employ a quarter of a million people in reeling factories alone.
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RAISING GOLDFISH BY THE MILLION
IF YOU own a goldfish, the chances are two to one it came from Martinsville. This southern Indiana town is the goldfish center of the world. Seventy-five million fish have begun life in the 600 ponds of its famous Grassyfork Fisheries.
When I spent a week, not long ago, watching the work of caring for these miles of goldfish, 10,000.000 baby fish had just rolled from their round white eggs and were darting about ponds and hatchery tanks. For the older fish, men were cooking mush breakfasts in giant 7,000-pound boilers. Other employees were busy shooting weed-killing chemicals into ponds; stalking watersnakes, musk-rats, fish hawks; sorting, counting, packing goldfish and sending them racing across country in a giant truck that resembles a submarine and can carry 200,000 fish in a single load.
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He’s a Rat Farmer
A strange little livestock ranch in the attic gave Norton McKinney a new life and a $10,000 crop.
By William Gilman
“FUNNY kind of a business for a fellow to get into,” the villagers shake their heads as they glance up at the old mansion Norton McKinney bought in quiet little Middletown Springs, Vermont.
And it is a funny setup, all right. The attic in his antiquated home swarms with rats—mice, too. Last time he took a census there were 1500 adult rats and mice, with new litters running up the rodent population practically every day. You’d think his wife Georgia would raise the roof about that ratty situation up in the attic—but, no, she only wants to hear more rats racing around over their heads. She even helps him nurse and coddle new-born rats with germ-free water and purify the air they breathe with ultra-violet lamps. No wonder their place is called Funny Farms!
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He Runs a Hotel for Bats
PLAYING host to 250,000 bats is the queer but profitable hobby of Milton F. Campbell, of San Antonio, Tex. His lakeside bat hotel, a tall wooden tower shaped like the base of a windmill, is the outgrowth of experiments begun years ago by his father, Dr. Charles A. R. Campbell, at that time city bacteriologist of San Antonio. Believing that bats would rid the area of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, Dr. Campbell spent years trying to induce the creatures to settle in a wooden roost which he constructed near the city sewage plant. Finally, by means of ear-splitting phonograph records, which drove the bats from their accustomed haunts, he effected their transfer to his specially constructed tower.
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This is how we end up with killer bees.
How Science Made a Better Bee
Amazing new discoveries bring improvement to nature’s masterpiece, enabling the busy little insect to do a better job for war.
By ALFRED H. SINKS
Photographs by WILLIAM MORRIS and ROBERT F SMITH
THE tiny honeybee—far more important to both war industry and our food supply than most people realize—is getting a lot of attention nowadays. Though nature has produced few animals as remarkable as these industrious little insects, entomologists and geneticists have found the means to improve on its handiwork. They are actually producing bees that work harder and so produce more honey—bees that are more industrious and energetic, healthier, and better able to protect their bee cities against natural enemies. Truly amazing are some of the results of this partnership of science and nature, and its future achievements may be greater still.
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HEDGEHOG HUNTING GOOD TRADE AND GOOD SPORT
By SAM E. CONNER
TRAPPING hedgehogs does not sound like a very attractive pursuit, but a man in Maine has found it to be a profitable business, as well as one that has an element of danger, and therefore offers excitement in excess of that which comes to a rabbit or fox hunter. While it is not generally known, there is a steady demand for these ugly-looking creatures from all sections of America and Europe. They are desired for zoos and menageries, both private and public, and country-fair and street venders, who use them to aid in selling preparations, disposed of under the name of hedgehog oil, hedgehog liniment, and like titles, provide still another market.
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RAISING RABBITS for PROFIT
RAISING rabbits for the market is a back-yard industry that has grown to million dollar proportions in the last few years. It is estimated that rabbit owners are receiving five million dollars annually from meat and fur, with the demand still going up.
In the past raising rabbits was simply a hobby, but now many people are devoting all their time to the small animals. Small initial capital, the small amount of space required, and the rapid development of rabbits to market size are factors that have stimulated the industry.
To get into the business you should first investigate marketing arrangements in your area. In some places slaughter houses that specialize in rabbits call for the live animals when they are ready. In other localities you arrange with a butcher to handle the output of your hutches. Domestic rabbit flesh is a delicious, tender meat comparable to breast of chicken.
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Yum!
Horse-Meat “Worms” Fool Frogs
TRICKING frogs into eating horse meat by making them think it alive is the solution worked out by H. L. Parker, of El Monte, Calif., for the problem of diet in domestic bullfrog breeding. For twenty years, Parker has been experimenting in raising frogs as a food delicacy. Recently he decided to try feeding his frogs on a horse-meat menu, since he found it practically impossible to provide the frogs’ natural live diet of vast quantities of minnows, insects, and earthworms. He contracted with the owner of a near-by lion farm for a supply of horse meat, the regular food of captive lions. This he chopped into strips about the size of worms and tossed into his concrete frog tanks.
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