THREE AMERICAN Chinchilla Farms PRODUCE MOST COSTLY FURS (Dec, 1933)
THREE AMERICAN Chinchilla Farms PRODUCE MOST COSTLY FURS
Wild Creatures from South American Andes Thrive in Captivity and Make Their Owner a Fortune in the Mountainous Sections of Our Western States
By Andrew R. Boone
IF YOU want the world’s finest fur coat, with wool long enough to thread a needle and fine as a spider’s web, you can get it, not from animals roaming at large in faraway places, but from captive rodents.
On three farms in Idaho, Utah, and California these tiny chinchillas grow. Naturalists call them the “missing link” between the rabbit, the squirrel, and the rat.
From the South American Andes, a former mining engineer, alone of the scores who have sought with fortunes and considerable skill to remove these strange little creatures from their native haunts in Peru and Chile to European and American pens, has transplanted a dozen. Today his herd numbers 160, only twenty more than would be required to make one large coat like the one illustrated at the extreme right.





























