They Grub for a Living
A few wheat beetles in a sack of chicken feed grew into a booming bait business.
By Shep Shepherd
BUGS can be big business. Just ask Marlyn A. Palmer and Ray Wiseman; they’re up to here in them—80 million of them every year.
Palmer and Wiseman raise golden grubs and sell them to fishermen throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada, shipping as many as a quarter-million grubs a day in busy seasons.
The golden grub is the larva of the black wheat beetle. It hatches from an egg, remains a grub for a short time, then goes into the pupa stage from which it gradually changes into a mature beetle. The complete transformation takes about six months. It is the larva, or grub, that drives fish frantic and sends anglers flocking to the bait shops.
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Catching Fish at the Corner Lot
NEAR the “Miracle Mile” on fashionable Wilshire Boulevard in Hollywood, an artificial miniature lake and trout stream have been created. The property, valued at $750,000 is owned by Ruth Roland, movie actress, and it is she who has launched this enterprise almost in the heart of Hollywood.
No expense has been spared to make this a fisherman’s ideal paradise in miniature. The pool has little appearance of artificiality, and although it is only 150 feet long, 50 feet wide and 4 feet deep, it holds 225,000 gallons of water.
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Attic-Raised Silk Worms Forecast $100,000,000 Industry
A $100,000,000 dollar industry, producing nearly a million new jobs, can be brought into the United States with the introduction of silk worm raising, John Ousta, a silk expert from Turkey, believes. As further proof of his claims, he has begun the raising of silk worms in the attic of his home in The Bronx, New York.
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Battling Deadly Crocodiles to Bring ‘Em in Alive
Capturing crocodiles alive along banks of Florida rivers proves to be an extremely hazardous, but at the same time an extremely lucrative occupation. If hunters can get close to a crocodile, they shoot him through the head to prevent damage to body skin. If close range shot is not possible, the “croc” is then trailed to his lair in under water burrow along river bank, in which he is imprisoned by means of board over entrance. Hunters locate the saurian’s head by prodding with iron rod, then dig a hole to the burrow. A gaff is next hooked under crocodile’s jaw, and he is pulled out.
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Armadillo Farm is Oddest Money Maker
by Edward B. Cope
Animals have been trapped for furs since the beginning of time, but the armadillo, queer armored creature of the Southwest, is only animal which is “shelled” to bring a cash return to farmer engaged in business of raising it.
THE strangest occupation in the world— that of raising animals which will later become articles of home decoration and furniture—is carried on by Charles Apelt on his armadillo farm near Comfort, Texas, 55 miles from San Antonio.
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Beavers Staging a Comeback
BEAVERS may once more become the basis on which all furs are valued if experiments now being conducted by the National Parks branch of the Canadian government are successful. Once the coin of the realm, beavers became so scarce that today no white man may trap them in the Dominion, and Indians may do so only in limited areas. Beaver fur is scarce, where once it was the standard on which all fur dealings were based.
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Hatching House Flies For Profit
IN AN ODD SKYSCRAPER FARM, DOMESTIC PESTS ARE RAISED FOR MANY CURIOUS PURPOSES
By FRANK CAPORAEL
SEVENTEEN stories above one of the busiest streets in New York City, America’s strangest livestock farm has its barns and pastures. The barns are glass jars. The pastures are mesh-inclosed cages. And, the product of this skyscraper ranch is house flies—5,500,000 flies a year!
The unique enterprise started ten years ago when scientists of an insecticide company wished to make exact tests of the effectiveness of their product. They needed normal, healthy flies on which to test the sprays. From this small beginning, the fly farm has grown to the mass-production activity of today.
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Raccoons for Hunters Grown on State Farm
REMARKABLE METHODS ADOPTED TO SAVE GAME ANIMALS FROM EXTINCTION
Grover C. Mueller IF YOU ever go raccoon hunting in Ohio, the chances are that the ring-tailed quarry your dogs find and hold at bay in a tree spent the early months of its life on an unusual farm almost within sight of the boyhood home of Thomas A. Edison. For more than two years, the State of Ohio, using money obtained from the sale of hunting licenses, has been operating a raccoon farm at Milan, not far from the shore of Lake Erie. This farm, believed to be the only enterprise of its kind maintained by a state, was established in an effort to prevent the extinction in Ohio of one of the gamest of native animals.
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It’s kind of cool to see the Google ads on the side advertising pretty much the same product.
BE INDEPENDENT! Own and Operate an “Indoor Poultry Farm”
One man, formerly an accountant, is averaging $2,500 a year from his 1,000-bird “indoor poultry farm”, installed in a remodeled commercial garage. Milton H. Arndt started this man and many others on the road to success.
Mr. Arndt, pioneer of the “indoor poultry farm” movement, and internationally known poultry specialist, has written a richly illustrated 160-page book entitled “A New Road to Independence”
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Merry-Go-Round House For Japanese Hens
Even the chickens are profiting from an automation boom in Japan! In operation at Okayama, a seven-story “apartment house” for chickens does everything but lay the eggs for the hens. An electric motor rotates the house, causing it to make a complete circuit every 38 minutes, stopping five minutes on each revolution to allow the birds to feed and drink from three food boxes on each story.
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Big Profits in Back Yard FROG Raising
A back yard is large enough to start the thriving business of frog raising. How to build up a big income with a very small investment is told in the following article. The white meat, with a taste similar to a tender, juicy squab, is greatly in demand.
by S. L. SCHUTT
WHEN Charlie, of the De Luxe Cafe, told me that he would have to discontinue serving frog leg dinners because his wholesaler couldn’t supply the frogs, I became vitally interested in an industry that has proven to be more profitable, entertaining, and healthful than any other I have ever known.
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