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Reluctant Taxidermist

Movie editor Bonn retired 27 years ago to enjoy his hobby but now he’s back in business.

By Peter Hill Gannet

TWENTY-SEVEN years ago John H. Bonn, then living in Portchester, N. Y., was a successful motion picture production editor with Paramount Pictures.

Taxidermy was only his hobby and at that time he was rather new at it. He’d been a fan only three years. It had always fascinated him, perhaps because of his love of animals and his appreciation of their beauty. It would be natural for him to try to duplicate nature’s handiwork.

Now his museum in Sheffield, Mass., about 25 feet square and built at a cost of $7,000 houses over 1,500 birds and animals ranging from a passenger pigeon extinct for 40 years to an unborn calf. Included are a Tragopan pheasant from Nepul, a huge king vulture from South America, anodd Paradise crane from Africa whose delicate wings touch the ground, an African crown crane with a stylish pompom, three birds of Paradise, a case of 66 native songbirds, an almost complete collection of North American wild ducks and geese and, in addition, over 800 animals. Such is his hobby. But Bonn is in business, too.

A hobbyist with a rare and valuable collection likes to show off his trophies and Bonn is no exception. The only trouble has been that almost everyone to whom he has done so, seems to have had a specimen or two he has wanted the taxidermist to mount for him. And the ex-movie editor is so adept and skillful in any mounting job he undertakes that his reputation has spread by worddia on a picture-taking expedition when the famous actor died.

Most of Bonn’s current business is, of course, from sportsmen who bring him their fish, deer, woodchucks and foxes and beg him to mount them. In 1953 he filled over 100 such orders reluctantly, because, since he is an artist, he devotes just as much meticulous care and painstaking skill to every job he undertakes, not only his own, and such an attitude does not make for production-line techniques.

He considers birds the easiest creatures to mount since the body consists of a wire frame with molded paper covering upon which the skin is stretched. And the feathers retain their natural color and need no doctoring. Fish are difficult, he claims, since the skinning must be done with as much skill as an expert surgeon employs during a delicate operation. And the body must be carved from balsa wood. For example, it takes him about two hours to mount a pheasant but far longer to do a workmanlike job on one of the finny species.

The taxidermist’s tools are a scalpel, scissors, draw-knife, arsenical soap, borax, needle and thread, paper mache, wood wool and wire —and an infinite amount of skill and patience. A deer head, for example, begins with the skinning and later shaving down of the skin with a draw-knife. Then the skin must be fitted to a mannikin head with the mannikin ears fitted in place. Then the horns are bolted on. Sounds easy? It looks easy, too, when one sees Bonn at his worktable. One imagines a young interne receives the same sensation while watching a famous surgeon’s nimble fingers at work.

Bonn’s prices? A deer head costs $30, a pheasant $10, fish from $20 up. A recent job was the mounting of a record 9-pound 5-ounce pickerel for which he charged $30.

They’re exceedingly low, proof that Bonn is a true artist and hobbyist, not a businessman. But don’t rush for a pen-and-paper to ask him to do your mounting job. He’ll probably refuse. But if you should be driving past his museum on the Sheffield road which stretches between Canaan, Conn, and Great Barrington, Mass. and should decide to drop in for a chat, and if he should decide to accept you as a friend, you might be able to persuade the reluctant taxidermist to reincarnate your trophy in all its vivid coloring and naturalness of true life.

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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.

The whole thing began over a half century ago when a German immigrant truck farmer, living near Torrence, Calif., discovered some black wheat beetles and grubs in his wheat meal chicken feed. An ardent fisherman, he wondered if the lively little grubs wouldn’t look good to trout. They did, and the farmer went into the grub business. For 40 years he raised grubs and sold them to other fishermen with moderate success. The big change came when the old man’s health failed and Ray Wiseman bought the business. Wiseman’s original investment for a lock-stock-and barrel purchase was a little over $10,000, considerably more than would be needed to start from scratch, but the money bought the old man’s years of know-how as well. Later Wiseman took in Palmer to handle sales and distribution.

During his first year of operation in 1947 Wiseman produced over four million grubs, almost enough to return his initial investment after distribution costs were paid. Costs of production were, of course, still to be deducted from the gross figure.

The firm made no attempt at immediate expansion, prefering to grow slowly while perfecting a fool-proof mass production system and at the same time propagating a superior grub. They began to hit their stride in 1954 when the production rose to 40 million grubs. Present figures show that 1955 production will exceed 80 million. Several million of these will be held back as seed stock, but the remainder will still return a gross income in excess of $300,000.

Wiseman and Palmer have streamlined the business to a point where it has really become two separate operations. Wiseman produces the grubs, paying all his own costs of production. Palmer then buys the grubs from Wiseman at so much per thousand and pays all costs of packaging and shipping.

Putting the grubs in the hands of the dealer costs Palmer approximately $3.30 per dozen cans (1200) of grubs. This figure includes the grubs themselves, cans, feed, shipping cartons, advertising material (included in carton), label, tape and postage. It also includes the producer’s profit.

What are the potentials? “Take a look at the figures,” say Wiseman and Palmer. “There are 30 million fishermen in the United States today. To supply each of them with just one can of grubs per year would require three million grubs. Of course, we realize that not all anglers will buy them. On the other hand there are many thousands who will use from one to two dozen cans each season. That is the goal we’re shooting for, but if we hit only a third of that figure we’re still going to have to • produce more than ten times our present output.”

Experimentation and prolonged study in the early years established a number of facts about the wheat beetle. By isolating a few beetles it was determined that one female beetle produced approximately 2,000 eggs per year, the majority of which hatched into grubs.

The big trouble was that the grub remained a grub for a very short time. Too often the grubs were no longer grubs when they had reached the fisherman. That obstacle, and it proved to be the major one, was hurdled when it was discovered that the grubs would remain dormant at temperatures under 50 degrees.

A cooler room was built at the three-acre farm and a large refrigerator installed in the sales office on Culver City. That did it. Now the grub farmers could handle the larva by the million if necessary, without risking loss due to the processes of nature.

Once the grubs are removed from the refrigerator they become active again and renew the process of becoming a beetle. However, at any time they may be returned to the cooler where they immediately go to sleep again.

With the problem of keeping the grubs solved Wiseman began improving the breed. The largest grubs from each hatch were put aside in boxes containing wheat flakes and allowed to mature as rapidly as possible. From the beetles thus obtained the largest and liveliest were selected as breeding stock. In a surprisingly short time Wiseman was i able to produce grubs nearly twice as large as the average non-cultivated larva.

When the big grubs, which the partners call Golden Jumbo Grubs, attain their full length, man steps in to interfere with nature by cooling junior down so he won’t go into the pupa stage. The grubs are placed in trays containing wheat meal and kept refrigerated until needed for shipping.

Palmer has worked out the packaging and shipping system to a fine art. The grubs are sold in %-pint cardboard containers holding 100 or more grubs each.

The containers are lined with glassine so the grubs won’t chew their way to freedom during shipment or while in the fisherman’s pocket. Some 50 dozen of these special containers are laid out on a huge table with their perforated lids stacked nearby. Out of the cooler comes the trays of slumbering grubs. But they aren’t just poured into the cans—not yet. For the grubs, like snakes, shed their skins and no dealer or fisherman wants a can of bait half filled with old dried skins. So they are screened. .

This process consists of pouring the grubs onto a special sieve made of a loosely woven cloth similar to cheesecloth. Slowly awakening from their hibernation, the grubs, who don’t like light, immediately crawl through the holes in the cloth into a clean porcelain tray, leaving their old skins behind.

Into each can now goes a half cup of wheat flakes for the 100 grubs to _ chew on en route. Also a cubic inch of special Luther Burbank spineless cactus which furnishes enough moisture to quench their thirst. A thin layer of paper is wadded on top and the lid goes on. The paper is for the grubs to crawl up on when they are sated with wheat meal. The container will not be opened again until the fisherman is ready to wet his line.

Most of the grubs are sold through dealers, but you can buy them direct through the mail for a dollar a can. Incidentally, the U. S. Forest Service says that grubs discarded in the woods can do no harm there.

According to thousands of voluntary letters in the firm’s files the golden grubs catch bass, trout, whitefish, perch, blue-gill, crappie and sunfish when other natural baits fail. A fair share of America’s 30 million fishermen now keep a can or two of the grubs in their home refrigerators to be hauled out when the fishing urge strikes.

Ice fishermen especially love them for the simple reason that they are the only live bait other than minnows that will stay alive in the ice-cold water.

To supply the present demand the farm has 360 incubators in four large grub hatcheries producing a 100-per cent crop every six months, a total of 80 million grubs yearly. “Yet,” says Palmer, “it would require 30 firms as large as our to supply the estimated 30 million fishermen in America.” •

CASH CROP for you every week in the year raising Royal baby birds. Orders now waiting for hundreds of thousands. Easy to raise. You pet your money for them when only 25 days old. Particulars and picture book for three-cent TL S. stamp.

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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. The bottom is of specially treated concrete to prevent seepage. A centrifugal pump, operated by an 8 h.p. motor forces 1000 gallons of water a minute from the pool through an 8-inch pipe to the top of the falls, from, where it flows over the precipice back into the lake. The stream is 800 feet long, and “Winds about and in and out.” Water is supplied to it in a continuous circuit to and from the pool by the same centrifugal pump. The water is kept at 50 degrees Fahrenheit by circulation, the entire contents of the pool completing the circuit every 225 minutes. This process also supplies the right amount of oxygen so necessary to the life and well being of the lusty trout.

The stream and pool will be kept stocked with thousands of Rainbow and Brook trout, from 8 to 14 inches in length. The management furnishes fly rods, creels and bait for a fee of fifty cents, and the angler may take as many fish as desired, at the rate of $1.00 for every three trout.

“The fish DO bite here; they are much like human beings about their eating habits. Trout usually prefer salmon eggs for breakfast, beef liver or heart at mid-day, and in the evening, the artificial fly.”

An expert gives free instructions in fly casting. The angler may have the catch cleaned, cooked and served in a restaurant.

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.

At present the United States is importing millions of dollars in raw silk- According to Mr. Ousta, American climatic conditions are more favorable to the raising of silk worm than in either Japan or Turkey. The silk worms he has raised thus far substantiate his claims and produce high quality silk.

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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.

Powerful jaws of captured crocodile are bound with stout ropes after he is pulled from burrow —the most hazardous part of the hunt. Insert shows Robert Faherty, well known crocodile hunter, exhibiting prize catch, worth about $100.00, captured after four hour struggle.

Final act of the “croc” hunt drama—the victim is lashed to board with ropes, as shown above. Thus bound, this crocodile was shipped to zoo in Miami, where he was put on display for tourists. He was considered an unusual prize.

Here is an old hunter exploring crocodile haunts in bushes along river bank. Thrills aplenty are his lot, but also handsome profits from valuable hides.

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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.

Employing a large crew of Mexican laborers to capture the flexible – shelled animals and another group to fashion the translucent shells into household novelties, the live armadillos are bred on the farm and sold as pets or as subjects for scientific research. The dead animals are scraped from their shells which are cured and then made into baskets, lamps, lighting fixtures, smoker stands and other articles.

The strangest feature of the 20-inch-long creatures whose armored shoulder and hip shield is connected by nine movable bands of bony plate, is the fact that every litter of young ‘uns is always four in number and are all of one sex—four males or four females, never mixed. It is for this reason that scientific institutions throughout the world study the odd development and heredity of the quaint animal.

As a pet, the armadillo is shy and retiring, but much more intelligent than the average domesticated animal. Eating everything and anything, the ‘dillo subsists on grain, eggs and vegetables in captivity, but on the open range he eats insects and flesh, both good and bad.

The powerful claws on the stubby legs of the armadillo enable him to burrow with great rapidity, in many cases going deeper and deeper as his pursuer digs in his wake. The story is told of a visitor on the Apelt farm who was determined to get an armadillo alive—the guest finally did “get his man,” but only after digging eight hours and in that time sinking six deep pits, one after another.

The armadillo has scaly armor almost like that of a tortoise, but, unlike the turtle, its head does not need to be drawn into the shell because the armor covers the ‘dillo right down to the nose. Compared with the turtle, the armadillo is the “flying tank” of the animal kingdom. The only mammal with bony plates, the armadillo—which is the diminutive for “armed” in Spanish—is found from Central America up on through Old Mexico to southwest Texas, especially in the hill country of the Lone Star State. The armored creature is principally a night rover who lives in a burrow several feet underground, except in captivity, as on the Apelt armadillo farm, where they are housed in well-ventilated sheds. The animal races quickly across the fields on its strong claws and with its exceptionally acute hearing makes it a difficult quarry for its hunters.

“Bring ‘em back alive—if possible,” Mr. Apelt instructs his 50 Mexican hunters shortly before the group scours the moonlit highlands of southwest Texas for their bony-plated quarry. A half dozen specially trained dogs accompany the “expedition.” After an armadillo is held at bay, a hunter will rush up and strike the solid ball of bony plates a blow on the head and then will put the stunned animal in gunny sacks.

When the hunters return to the Apelt farm—usually the morning following the drive—the dead armadillos are immediately skinned, or, more specifically, “shelled”; the wounded animals are killed, while others are stuffed, kept for breeding purposes or sent to laboratories.

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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.

In order to bring the beaver back to its once multitudinous population, studies are being made of beaver life to find the best ways to increase its numbers. Besides being a valuable fur-bearing animal, the beaver is considered by government authorities as one of the best means toward forest-fire prevention, for it has been found that in regions in which the beaver is populous the least fires occur, and in those where the beaver has been wiped out by hunters and forestry operations, the greatest fire hazard is to be found.

A half-breed Indian named Grey Owl has been made the official doctor and nurse of the beaver. He goes to the various parks of the government where the beaver is found in some numbers and then studies the habits of the animal. He has made friends with the beavers wherever he has gone, so that they come to him at his call, invade his house, and become attached enough for him to find out what foods besides twigs and leaves they like best and which are most nourishing.

He has gone so far in this study, that where he has found orphaned beaver kittens he has fed the youngsters from a bottle and even a syringe, giving them milk diets. As they grew older he fed them boiled rice, apples, and other foods not found in the woods. The beavers fed in this way have thrived. Grey Owl has learned also that the animals can be transported from one section of the country to another without harm. He has on several occasions taken them with him in boxes in his canoe, and on wagons and trains.

Other experiments have shown that beavers brought up from kittens on special foods and kept in a tank in a cottage for the winter will in summer go back to the streams and the woods, to fell trees, build dams and lead their natural life.

Grey Owl’s activities as guardian of the beavers include the breeding of strong virile colonies. Through trapping, the interbreeding among some of the colonies has weakened their resistance to weather and other animals. In such cases beavers from vigorous colonies are brought in to strengthen the weaker groups.

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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.

Under the direction of Dr. Alfred Weed, as many as 15,000 flies a day are turned out for a wide variety of uses. The majority end their days in spraying tests conducted in the laboratory where they are born. But others are purchased for different uses. Mrs. Norman Bel Geddes, wife of the noted industrial designer, once put in several orders for flies to feed a pet chameleon. Another New York woman, who returned from Florida with a pair of tiny tree toads, called the laboratory to inquire the price of a dozen houseflies a day for her pets. During the past summer, 5,000 flies a day have been supplied for one exhibit at the New York World’s Fair.

All these insects grow up under exactly; the same conditions. Air-conditioning apparatus keeps the humidity and temperature in the glass-inclosed fly farm the same from day to day. Ordinary flies, breeding in filth, are oftentimes troubled with mites. Insects infested with these minute parasites have reduced vitality and succumb to poison sprays more easily than healthy flies. To insure uniform results, all flies used for testing insecticides have to be free from parasites.

By raising his winged livestock under carefully controlled conditions, Dr. Weed is able to produce millions of flies that meet this requirement. The adult insects, housed in mesh cages, feed upon water and milk. The eggs laid by the “breeding stock” are carefully seeded in jars filled with a mixture of bran, brewer’s yeast, malt and alfalfa.

The complete growth cycle of the fly, from egg to adult, consumes about ten days. For more than half of this time, the larvae, or maggots, feed and burrow through the mixture in the jars. Then they turn into tiny brown pupae which are collected for shipment. Mailed in cardboard tubes, they produce adult flies about three days later.

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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.

A generation ago a coon hunt was as common as a game of checkers. There were plenty of raccoons and plenty of trees in which they could live and seek safety. In recent years, however, the raccoon population has been dwindling at a rate so rapid as to cause alarm.

Consequently, the coon hunt, formerly so popular and fruitful, became in Ohio, a matter of exercise only. There were not enough coons to provide really good hunting. In an effort to remedy this condition, William H. Reinhart, Conservation Commissioner, secured the establishment of the Milan farm. Hunters were paying money for the privilege of hunting raccoons and other animals, so it was logical that these funds should be used to maintain the farm. Not a cent of taxpayers’ money was used and the land was donated by civic interests of Milan.

Raccoons raised on the farm are distributed in equal numbers throughout the eighty-eight counties in Ohio. The animals are placed in trucks during the latter part of September and are liberated near wooded areas where they find homes.

Between the time the raccoon is liberated and the opening of the hunting season on November 15, there is plenty of opportunity for it to forget its domestication and to become a wild animal, as full of fight as if it never had known a wire coop.

As many as 2,000 visitors have been admitted to the farm on a single Sunday. Incidentally, the farm is open to visitors after the middle of June, but is closed before that time as a female raccoon does not like to be disturbed when raising its young and in fright may kill them.

The zoologist will tell you that the raccoon is closely related to the bear. As you watch a coon pacing back and forth along a beaten path at one side of its cage, you can see that its gait is very much like that of the bear. Doubtless that is because the two animals, as well as man, have plantigrade or semi-plantigrade feet, which means that they walk on the soles of their feet, with heels touching the ground. While a full-grown raccoon is a little larger than a cat, its fur is so heavy that it looks two or three times its actual size, especially when in a rage.

The Milan farm produces normally the black, part black, and gray varieties of raccoons. The gray, or silvery, coon is the most commonly seen in the wild state, and is the common source of the coats usually associated with college men. The grayish hairs are tipped with black, and there are black and white patches on nose and cheek. The tail is ringed.

Last year, when the young were being counted, E. L. Striff, caretaker, was astonished to discover two coons that were pure white in color. These have attained their full growth and are now the prize possessions of the farm. It is unlikely that the white raccoons will be liberated. They are somewhat of a rarity and their pelts are valuable. The white raccoons are sports, or albinos. This means that hereditary traits so combined that coloring material was omitted from their makeup. Consequently, they have white hair and colorless eyes, a condition that not infrequently occurs among human beings. Experiments are being planned to see if a strain of white raccoons, like white rats, can be maintained. Incidentally, these animals resemble overgrown rats more than anything else.

The raccoon is a highly independent amimal, able to take care of itself anywhere. It has been the experience of the farm staff that coons are among the healthiest animals ever raised in captivity. If normal care is given to their diet, they will thrive readily. They are remarkably free of common animal diseases.

One of the entertaining traits of a coon is its apparently limitless curiosity. It will examine any strange thing that comes in its way. Its paws resemble the hands of monkeys and are equipped with needlelike claws. The raccoon is an expert excavator, and can dig holes with ease.

Among American animals the raccoon is surpassed only by the bat and the flying squirrel as a lover of night life. During the daytime the raccoon sleeps. For this reason, the Milan coon farm frequently looks deserted to the visitor. As evening approaches, there is a stir of activity in every cage, and at night the inmates are up and about. Every coon hunter knows that he and his dogs can do their tracking best at night.

So important is a tree den in the lives of raccoons and squirrels that Ohio conservation officials have started a movement, through sportsmen’s organizations, to save the existing hollow trees in which these animals live. A land owner has a dead or dying tree on his place, and to him it is merely an eyesore or a potential source of firewood. He cuts it down without thinking that, to a family of coons or squirrels, it is home sweet home; and when the home of a wild animal is destroyed, it is more difficult for that animal to protect itself and raise its young. When a coon cannot set up housekeeping in a hollow tree, it may seek out a stream and live along the banks, for by nature it is a water-loving animal.

The movement includes the creation of new tree homes for coons and squirrels. Hollow trees whose openings are too large for the animals can be partially filled or closed so as to render them habitable. Trees that are decayed but not hollow can be opened up. Hollow trees with openings too small for occupancy can be enlarged. Of course, such operations are undertaken only when the tree is not useful to the owner of the land for any other purpose.

A raccoon will eat almost anything. Feeding schedules at the state farm call for a wide variety of food, with a preference for vegetables rather than meats during the hot season. Lake Erie, a few miles away, provides an abundance of fish. Large quantities of milk are used. Green corn, rolled oats, corn meal, ear corn, dried bread, and tomatoes also are fed. In the wild state, a coon is his own fisherman. He will capture fish, crayfish, and mussels. Although an expert swimmer, he cannot dive and chase his prey under water.

The Milan raccoon farm consists of about 600 cubical pens made of chicken wire on wooden framework, and arranged in orderly rows. In each pen there may be two or three males, but each female has her own apartment. The young are born in early spring, there being one to five in a litter. They normally remain with their mother during the first year. For several weeks after birth of the young, the females cannot be disturbed. If they are, they will kill their young by dragging them about in an effort to hide them from the approach of intruders.

In addition to raccoons, the state raises rabbits and a limited number of pheasants at the Milan farm. It is necessary to keep on duty a professional hunter who spends his time shooting and trapping weasels, owls, hawks, and other predatory animals that prey upon the rabbits and birds. However, no such service is required at the raccoon section because the average coon can take care of such intruders without assistance.

Last spring there were 676 raccoons on the Milan farm. Their offspring probably will total 1,500. In the fall most of the young animals, together with some older ones, will be liberated. Enough young ones will be kept to assure an adequate breeding stock. The value of the raccoons to be released runs into thousands of dollars. Although exact prices cannot be quoted, the hunter who captures a gray coon this fall probably can get from $4 to $5 for its pelt. If he gets a part-black coon, he can sell its pelt for around $6 and if his luck is unusually good, he will bag a pure black one that will net him $7.

The Ohio raccoon farm is in many ways a pioneer institution. It is regarded as an excellent example of the way in which desirable wild animals can be saved from extinction. As the population of the United States grows more dense, it becomes more difficult for wild animals and birds to exist. People unintentionally destroy natural sources of food and protection, with the result that the native animals must either adapt themselves to new conditions or perish.

Because raccoons can be raised in captivity with perhaps a greater degree of success than most other animals, coon farming some day may be an industry of considerable size. Already, many persons are picking up extra dollars by raising coons.

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”

Mr. Arndt shows how you can start in a barn, garage or empty loft and build up a flourishing business. How to sell super-quality fresh eggs and tender, delicious broilers direct to retail customers, also to restaurants, hotels and roadhouses.

This book will introduce you to a new, uncrowded vocation to which you can profitably devote part or full time.

Money-Back Guarantee Send $1.00 today- We will mail you this book, postpaid. If not fully satisfied, return the book within 5 days. Your money will be promptly refunded.

MILTON H. ARNDT Dept. B-60 Trenton, N. J.

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. The attendant remains in one spot to fill the boxes. Instead of keeping 420 separate boxes filled, he has only 21 feed boxes to look after for the entire 420 chickens in the house. The machine is so geared that three cages on each floor stop for five minutes every 38 minutes, feeding 21 hens each turn. In appreciation for such deluxe service, the chickens readily lay eggs which roll forward on a small ramp to be collected.

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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.

No frog farmer need search for a market, his crop is virtually all sold before it is raised. I could sell one hundred times my present production in a single week, and am expanding my ponds so, eventually, I expect to have 1000 acres utilized solely for giant bullfrog culture. I sell tadpoles at five to ten cents each by the hundred. They are used to stock farms and for aquarium purposes.

Frog Meat Is Delicious

Bullfrogs, that cost me less than one cent per year to feed, wholesale at $3.00 per dozen in large quantities. Smaller frogs, of which only the legs are used, sell for as high as seventy cents per pound. Each frog gives a pound of delicious white meat that has a taste similar to a tender, juicy squab. The whole frog is used, the front quarter being just as delicious as the legs.

Just one pair of breeders lay over 10,000

eggs each season; usually over seventy per cent hatch and develop into small frogs.

The advantage of frog farming is the fact that you can start practically anywhere and expand gradually as your profits mount. A vacant city lot, an old orchard or even a back yard can be utilized. Due to the cannibalistic nature of adult frogs, the frog farmer needs three separate ponds, segregating the breeders, tadpoles, and small frogs.

I have found a pond, 20×20 feet, water area, with bank space of six feet on all sides, to be capable of keeping six pairs of breeders. The water depth should not exceed 18 inches except for a pit in the center of the pond where the frogs hibernate in the winter time.

Confine With Poultry Wire

Ordinary one-inch mesh poultry wire four feet high with burlap sewed on the inside to prevent injury and to confine the smaller frogs, is the most sensible fence a frog farmer can use both for breeders and small frogs. Frogs breed from April until August.

At this time, the frog farmer must have a small pond about 10×15 feet planted with arrowheads, water moss and other aquatic plants, in readiness. The pond should be not less than three feet deep to take care of the thousands of tadpoles.

The egg mass must be immediately transferred to the small pond, using a scoop to handle them. In five days, each cluster becomes a wiggling, living mass of tadpoles. Tadpoles are scavengers, eating anything from table scraps to water moss.

In six to eight months, the tadpole begins to develop legs and in a short time is a small frog. At this time, its diet changes from that of a scavenger to being satisfied only with a live or moving food.

The growing pond for the offspring of six pairs should embrace about two acres, including shore line. Water in the two acre tract should cover not more than one-half of the entire area.

Feeding the Frogs

I have raised frogs on liver and other domestic meat but I found it impractical to consider this method of feeding on a large scale.

Small bullfrogs can be supplied with an abundance of insects, especially flies, by simply concealing several fish heads in the vegetation along shore. Common crabs, found in most any ditch or stream, and good food for frogs, can be placed directly into the growing pond where they will reproduce in enormous quantities.

When ready for marketing, the frogs are caught at night by blinding them with a search light. When the catcher gets a frog he puts it into a burlap sack with others. They are then put into small pens awaiting the dresser who grabs them by their rear legs and pierces the head with a nail by a downward stroke of the hand. The entrails are removed and the frog is ready for shipment in barrels of cracked ice. .

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MOUSE MILK $10,000 a quart

BY LESTER DAVID

THE Columbia University medical school has given M. D. degrees to 3,000 assorted black and white mice. The M. D. stands for Mouse Dairy.

Elsie the Borden cow would probably look down the side of her dainty nose at Juniper the Columbia Mouse because of the latter’s scanty milk output. Juniper yields a mere cubic centimeter every few months and the entire kit and kaboodle of 3,000 is good for only two quarts a year. Elsie can sniff but Juniper, in her academic robe and rakish mortarboard, can snub right back because Elsie just isn’t in her social class. Far from being a poor church mouse, Juniper and her sisters and cousins and aunts give up what is probably the most expensive liquid in the country today. It costs $20,000 for the two-quart output, the price of maintaining the dairy for a year. From Elsie’s standards the dairy would be a flop, for the “cowshed” is a smallish, antiseptic-smelling laboratory on the 15th floor of the College of Physicians and Surgeons overlooking the Hudson River; the milking machine is a tiny pump which Elsie could crush with a swish of her tail; and the “dairymaid” is a bespectacled scientist in an acid-stained smock.

But Dr. Samuel Graff, boss of the dairy, knows better. He knows that Juniper and her herd are supplying scientists with a new tool With which to pry open the deadly secret of cancer.

Here’s why Juniper and her relatives are important: Dr. Graff and his colleagues at the medical college found that breast cancer in mice bears a close resemblance to the same type of malignancy in humans. It had been known for some years that in mice breast cancer can be induced by feeding or injecting the milk from those mice which develop the disease spontaneously. The collaborating specialists therefore concentrated their attention on the identification and isolation of the cancer-producing agent transmitted in the milk. After considerable research they succeeded in isolating the “thing” which they believe causes the cancer in mice. This supposed virus, when photographed and magnified 35,000 times, is shaped like a rubber ball.

Now here’s how the 3,000 mice in the lab fit into the picture: Of the total mouse population, 680 are white mice which almost always develop cancer of the breast. The others are black mice, which almost never get the disease. Dr. Graff and his associates milk the cancerous mice and feed the fluid to the non-cancerous black mice. Then, says Dr. Graff:

“In a year and a half, if the black mice develop cancer, we will have proved that the chemical we isolated is that which causes cancer of the breast in mice.”

The dairy’s milking machine is a breast pump using a tiny glass tube with a minute rubber attachment. A mercury regulator keeps the pressure even. It takes just about ten minutes to milk each mouse and each can be milked only once during pregnancy.

The mice are kept in scrupulously clean metal cages, one mouse to a cage, and the cages are stacked like book shelves in three rooms of the lab. White mice are kept in one room, black ones in another and a “control group” the ones to watch for development of cancer, in the third. The cages are eight inches long and six high and are lined with sterile wood shavings.

Living conditions are ideal for the dairy’s population. Everything possible is done to maintain the health of the mice because, says Dr. Graff: “Any disease would destroy our experiment. That’s why these mice live better than most people.”

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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. Chick authorities generally agree that the process is harmless. Says Dr. Walter Landauer, Connecticut Agricultural School: ‘The injection of the dye does not hurt the chick because it goes into the albumen without actually getting into the chick itself.” Dr. Alexis L. Romanoff warned against the process becoming a fad. There’s a law in New York against importing chicks as toys, he added.

Enterprising News Vender Trains Dog to Peddle Papers

CHICAGO has the ideal street corner newspaper vender. He can’t shout, because this “newsboy” is a dog—a well trained police dog that energetically goes about the business of peddling papers.

The dog has been trained by his master to carry a newspaper in his mouth in such a manner that the headlines are well displayed. The dog wears a little Swiss hat, which bears the legend, “Buy Your Papers From Me.” To a bit of harness is attached a tin cup. When a coin is dropped in the cup, the dog is trained to release the newspaper. As soon as one paper is sold, it is replaced by the dog’s owner.

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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.

Silk is playing a vital role in this war, but there’s not nearly enough of it for all needs. Everyone knows we were dependent on Japan for all our silk before the war. We were the world’s greatest consumer, taking three-quarters of the total supply. We imported 150 to 200 million dollars’ worth annually from Japan, but produced not an ounce at home.

It’s strange that silkworm-raising has never been practised in this country because, according to experts, it has the best climate in the world for it. The big obstacle up till now has been the cost of reeling the thread from the cocoons, but Ousta has invented a very simple but efficient machine for the job which can be built for $100 and can be operated by a child.

Raising silkworms pays a good profit as a side-line activity. Ousta estimates the profit on about a month’s work at $75 to $100. Aside from feeding the worms, the only work required is controlling the temperature and humidity around them. The only investment needed are a few dollars for eggs and mulberry leaves they eat. In many parts of the country mulberry trees grow wild. Worms from one ounce of eggs will eat 800 to 900 pounds of leaves during their 30 to 35 day life cycle. In the north, 2 or 3 crops a year can be raised; in the south, 4 to 6.

The eggs are hatched by gradually raising the temperature around them from a storage temperature of 36 degrees to 75 degrees and the humidity to 90, over a period of 10 to 12 days. Once they’re hatched, the humidity is dropped to 50 or 60. From this point on, the main job is keeping the worms fed with chopped up mulberry leaves while they grow from 1/8 of an inch to 1 inch long. After 30-odd days they are all set to spin their cocoons. This is where, under the Jap system, most of the work comes in, but Ousta has made an ingenious arrangement that reduces it to a minimum. Instead of laboriously transferring the full-grown worms from their beds to bamboo racks on which they spin their cocoons, Ousta has series of trays with chicken wire bottoms built two feet apart and running from floor to ceiling in his home. Here the worms grow, resting on newspapers. Then Ousta puts dried weed branches vertically between the trays, and the worms climb up them and spin their cocoons. The temperature is raised to between 75 and 80, the humidity greatly reduced, during the 6 or 7 days in which the worms are working. When they’re finished, the cocoons are steamed at high temperature to kill the chrysalis and any parasites. In order to get the silk out of the cocoons in threads, the cocoons are first boiled, then doused in cold water, finally plunged in water of 140 degrees. A brush stirred through the water picks up the naturally sticky silk threads, 5 to 8 at a time, depending on the thickness of the thread desired, and the thread is inserted into the reeling machine. One Ousta cocoon will give up to 3,000 yards of silk strand; 70 or 80 will make a pair of stockings. It takes 100 Jap cocoons to make the same thing.

Lone Girl Raises 15,000 Chickens In Indoor Cages

ADOPTING a system invented by Milton H. Arndt, of Trenton, N. J., a 19 year-old Long Island girl, Lillian Swenson, is raising and taking care of 15,000 chickens indoors. The chickens never see or need the sunlight for the necessary vitamin “D” is supplied in their food.

Each chicken has its own wire compartment measuring about one and a half feet square. Compartments are arranged in batteries of 100 chickens each making it possible to house them in a small area. Running water and individual feed troughs are located in each compartment.

Through the use of the indoor compartment system, using cellars, lofts, etc., and feeding the chickens scientifically balanced rations, mortality rate has been cut from 40-60% to less than 1%. So successful is this method that a large New York hotel raises its own chickens on the roof. The flavor of the eggs is said to be superior to those of barnyard chickens.

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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.

At Grassyfork, I discovered, goldfish raising is a highly specialized, mass-production, million-dollar-a-year business in which scientific research has played a key role. Incidentally, the work provides an absorbing show that attracts thousands of visitors a year.

To go back to the beginning. About the year 1900, Eugene C. Shireman fell heir to a swampy farm a mile or so north of Martinsville. This was just twenty-two years after Rear Admiral Daniel Ammen, of the U. S. Navy, had brought the first goldfish to America from the Orient. One day, a friend from Indianapolis drove down to see Shireman. He was selling washing powder for a chemical company which had hit upon the bright idea of offering a small bowl and a pair of goldfish as a premium with its product. The scheme clicked from the beginning. In fact, it worked so well they had run out of goldfish. Shireman decided to turn his swamp into a fish farm and sell his crop to the chemical company.

He began with 200 goldfish, the original breeders whose descendants are now nearing the hundred-million mark. By the time he was turning out enough fish to sell, the chemical company had gone out of business. But other concerns were giving goldfish as premiums and during the next half-dozen years, Shireman’s fish increased the sale of a score of products.

In fact, practically the. whole demand for goldfish in the early days was for use as premiums to aid selling campaigns.

The average output, during the thirty-four years since the farm was started, has been more than 2.000,000 goldfish a year with the annual harvest soaring in the past few years to 7,000.000. At present, the ponds hold a surplus that brings the total number on hand close to 50,000,000. Full-grown and nose to tail, they would form a solid line of goldfish stretching 3000 miles from coast to coast!

Nearly 100 people keep on the jump caring for these millions of fish and running associated factories. The board bill for the goldfish, alone, reaches $75,000 a year, more than the feeding costs of any other livestock producer in the state. Wheelbarrows and horse-drawn trucks run along the levees between ponds to transport the various foods. They include tons of egg yolk, carloads of flour and enough mush and hominy to feed an entire army of men.

For a bird’s-eye view of the vast-scale activity at this biggest hatchery on earth, let’s follow the goldfish of one hatching through their life at Grassyfork.

Lining the edges of the eighty breeding ponds, you see rectangular frames of wood anchored in place.

They contain curious nests of Spanish moss held in place by wire webbing. When the eggs are ejected by the female and fertilized by fluid shot into the water by the male, they adhere to the threads of moss like round, miniature pearls. Each is nearly transparent and about a sixteenth of an inch in diameter.

Some of the veteran breeders are more than a dozen years old, according to Capt. Harry Wood, manager of the plant. One female may lay as many as 75,000 eggs in a season. Spawning, which begins at sunrise, continues until about noon. When the eggs are firmly attached, the moss is transferred to one of the 216 concrete hatchery tanks. Unfertilized eggs rapidly become covered with fungus and soon have the appearance of tiny balls of cotton batting. The fertilized eggs, about sixty percent, hatch out into microscopic fry about the same color and hardly larger than mosquito larvae.

The first meal of these black wiggle-tails is powdered egg yolk. More than twenty tons of it, some coming from as far away as China, are used to satisfy the appetites of the baby fish each year. The equivalent of from fifteen to twenty dozen eggs may go into a single pond every twenty-four hours.

During the first ten days, the minute fish, which have the same appearance as the fry of carp or bass, dart about their concrete tank, gobbling down microscopic bits of food. At the end of that time, they are transferred to one of the 350 ponds reserved for little fish and soon afterwards are shifted to stronger fare. This is a cheap grade of wheat flour. It is thrown by the bucketful over the surface of the water. In twenty-four hours, 40,000 of the little fish will consume as much as thirty pounds of flour.

The ponds range in size from fifty feet across for the smallest to an area of eighteen acres for the largest. Fed by natural springs, they drain downhill from one to the other, emptying into Grassy-fork Creek and Clear Creek which eventually reaches the Wabash River. The total area under water is more than 350 acres, consisting of 615 ponds.

Two ponds, with a combined area of almost an acre, contain no fish. They are given over to one of the queerest aquatic ranches in the world, producing billions and billions of water fleas, or daphniae, to feed the minnows.

On cool summer mornings, these ponds seem a solid mass of microscopic animal life as the water fleas, red, green, or brown, according to the color of the bottom, rise to the surface. At intervals, men collect them in cheesecloth nets and transfer them to the feeding ponds. Care must be taken in the amount of daphniae placed in a pool as too much may smother the tiny fish.

Ralph Van Hoy, one of the experts in charge of the delicate work of feeding, showed me an ingeniously simple device which helps him estimate the number of
fish in a pond. Because they are the same color as the water, the young fish are almost invisible, especially on cloudy days. Van Hoy’s device is a stick with a bright square of tin at the end. When he runs it through the water, he can see the fish swimming between him and the tin and judge the number in the pond and how much food they will require. Most of the flour is thrown near the edges where mud can be scraped up at frequent intervals to see if any of the food remains uneaten. Overfeeding is one of the quickest roads to trouble.

Thousands of dollars have been spent at Grassyfork in chemical research seeking a compound that will kill weeds without injuring fish. The successful formula is being kept a trade secret. One bizarre occurrence marked early experiments in this field. A weed-killer under test was sprayed over a pond. Afterwards the fish turned blood red!

Getting the right color and obtaining it as soon as possible are two problems of the goldfish raiser. For goldfish aren’t goldfish until they are several months old. They are olive black like their cousins, the carp. And, curiously enough, just before they turn reddish gold they reach their blackest hue. The coming shift in color seems to drive all the dark pigment to the surface.

Scientists from all over the middle west have spent time making researches in biology at the hatchery. Literally scores of attempts were made to speed up the shift in color so the fish could be placed earlier on the market. The average age of fish leaving Grassy-fork is now four months. Hatched in June, they are ready for sale in October.

IN THE experiments, fish were kept in covered tanks, in open tanks, in small tanks and large tanks, in pitch-dark tanks, in sun-rayed tanks; in tanks filled with warm water, with cool water, with water treated with various chemicals. They ate powdered liver and chemicals were introduced into their rations. Nothing did any good. The correct color appeared at Nature’s appointed time and not before.

By the end of a year, eighty per cent of the fish have changed color. The rest are usually put back and held for another year. Some never do become goldfish and are sold for bait. Hundreds of thousands are shipped from Martinsville each year. Because they live longer than other minnows, many anglers prefer them. The price runs from a dollar a hundred up.

Fish that can swim around in a thimble when several days old may grow to a length of eight inches in four months under the scientific diet and care at Grassyfork. The average growth is about an inch a month, the fish being three or four inches long when ready for sale.

At the end of the second month, the flour diet is stopped, and the young fish start in on the growing rations, cooked hominy hearts which have been compressed to squeeze out all the oil and then ground to powder. Practically all the feeding is done in the morning. The breeding fish get corn-meal mush, thrown into the water in great chunks. This mush cooks in a boiler that holds three and a half tons and, at some seasons of the year, three boilerfuls a day—21,000 pounds of mush—are needed to supply the breeding ponds. As much as 5,000 pounds have been thrown into a single seven-acre pond at one time.

During the fall and winter, when the fish are semi-dormant, the Grassyfork food bill drops to almost nothing. Occasionally men walk out on the ice and peer down into the ponds. If the fish are moving about, they chop holes in the ice and throw in food; if they are quiet, they leave them alone.

IN 1916, during a heavy freeze, one of the ponds turned to solid ice. A muskrat had burrowed through a levee and pulled down the water level of the pond so it froze to the bottom. More than 100,000 fish were killed. While an occasional goldfish will live after being frozen in solid ice, most specimens are affected if the water nears the freezing point or rises above ninety degrees Fahrenheit. The ideal temperature of water for goldfish is about sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

Harvesting the goldfish is always an exciting time at the hatchery. Men, wading up to their waists in water, drag huge seines through the ponds. They are followed by crews with long scoops who work across the mud of the bottom when the water has been drained away, filling pails with the fish that remain. Hooked to shoulder yokes, these buckets are carried to waiting trucks and hauled to the five ponds that surround the shipping depot. Here, the fish are dumped into screen cages where water, driven by an electric pump, sprays over them to harden them for shipping.

Inside the red-brick shipping depot, men sort the fish, sliding them rapidly over oilcloth-covered tables into different containers. Later they count them and pack them in special metal cans with compartments overhead for cakes of ice. Only in recent years, have shipments in summer heat been possible. The containers and methods worked out at Grassyfork enable fish to stay alive for eighty hours and arrive in good condition. As many as 283,000 goldfish leave the depot by express on a single working day.

SUPPLEMENTING the express containers is a recent innovation, a “submarine” tank truck, a ten-tired giant that hauls between 60,000 and 110,000 goldfish on every trip to the eastern depot of the hatchery at Saddle River, N. J. Other depots of the company are located at Chicago, Ill., and Hamilton, Ont.

As many as 200,000 fish can ride in the porous metal baskets which are packed in the tank row on row as it is filled with water. When the level inside has risen into the “conning tower” dome, which prevents splashing, there are 1,400 gallons of water within the huge container. At the rear, a three-horsepower gasoline engine drives a compressor, forcing a constant stream of fresh air through the water. Three times, once every fourteen hours, during the trip to Saddle River, the water is changed. The construction of the truck—the only one of its kind in existence—insulates the fish from external heat and cold. Two layers of metal, with a two-inch cork lining between, form the shell of the tank.

Once, last winter, the machine rolled into Saddle River with the thermometer standing at forty degrees below zero. Yet the construction of the tank protected the fish and not one was lost. Over the auxiliary engine, and warmed by its heat, a coil of tubing carries the air into the water during winter months, thus raising its temperature.

The average number of trips for this road giant is forty a year. Oneway runs to the eastern seaboard take from fifty to fifty-four hours and the round trip approximately 120 hours. It can maintain a steady pace of forty miles an hour along concrete roads without jarring or injuring the fish packed inside.

Riding in the tank are eight types of goldfish, the kinds specialized in by the hatchery. They are: common goldfish, long-tailed comets, stubby-bodied Japanese nymphs, red fantails, spotted calico fantails, varicolored shubunkins—no two of which ever have the same pattern of red, black and blue patches on their sides—red telescopes, with their protruding eyes, and black Moor telescopes.

FREAKS—silver goldfish, specimens with fins in odd, abnormal positions, partial albinos—are segregated during the sorting. In all the millions of fish which have crossed the sorting tables at Grassyfork, Capt. Wood told be, no perfect albino has ever appeared. The greatest freak in goldfish history, and also the most valuable specimen ever seen in America, was the famous Liberty Bond fish exhibited during the World War. Red, white and blue, it was used to attract crowds during the Liberty Loan drives of 1917 and 1918. Its owner valued it at $10,000. The price of the fish raised in Martinsville runs from a nickel apiece, for small common goldfish, to $25.00 apiece, for the relatively rare Moor telescopes.

Where do they sell all their millions of fish? Who buys them? Those are questions almost every visitor wants to know. Nickel and dime stores, pet shops, department stores, carnivals, chain stores, drug stores, florists— these all are regular customers. In addition, unusual sales add to the total.

FOR INSTANCE, not long ago, a wood-treating plant in the middle west sent in a hurry call for a thousand goldfish to eat up mosquito larvae in the standing water of the treating tanks. New Jersey and other states also buy fish as part of a program of mosquito control. Indiana purchases thousands of uncolored fingerlings to feed growing bass in state hatcheries.

Most goldfish that fail to live in captivity are killed by pampering. Their needs are few and simple. Let me pass on a dozen tips offered by the men at Grassyfork for keeping your pets in good condition.

1. Don’t overcrowd them. In the aquarium allow a gallon of water for every inch of fish, not counting the tails.

2. Don’t change water too often. Once every six months is sufficient. Occasionally dip out a gallon or so and replace it with fresh water of the same temperature. Such water should be allowed to “ripen” in the room for twenty-four hours before being poured into the aquarium. If this is not possible, sprinkle a pinch of salt in it.

3. Never shift fish to water that is hotter or colder than that in the aquarium. Violent changes in temperature injure them. The correct thermometer reading for a goldfish bowl is between sixty and seventy degrees Fahrenheit.

4. Don’t overfeed. This is the commonest cause of trouble. Never place more food in the bowl than can be consumed in twenty minutes.

5. During the winter, cut the amount of food in half. Fish are much less active then and three feedings a week are plenty.

6. When your fish “cluck” at the top of the water, it is a sign they need more oxygen. Hot, thundery days and dark winter ones are the times when the goldfish most need extra oxygen. Plants such as sagittaria, eelgrass and ditchmoss add oxygen to the water and should always be growing in the aquarium. Oxygen-forming chemicals are available for aquarium use and an electric-driven aerator, which washes and warms the air before pumping it into the water, is on the market for large aquariums.

7. If you use city water, check up on the chemicals being put in it. Chlorine is deadly to goldfish. It breaks down the gill tissue just as lye would do. A fish injured by chlorine can never be restored to health.

8. Never fertilize waterplants in a pool with manure. It adds toxic acids to the water and injures the fish.

9. At spawning time, remove all snails from the aquarium. They eat the eggs. You never have little fish without waterplants in the pool. The older fish eat the eggs unless they have vegetation to protect them.

10. Once a month add a pinch of Epsom salts to the water in the aquarium. It acts as a laxative and helps keep the fish in good condition.

11. Keep your aquarium in a light part of the house. Fish need sunshine; they do not do well in dark corners.

12. Watch the fin on a fish’s back. It is his health barometer. When it begins to droop, the fish is ailing; when it is erect, the fish is well. Oftentimes, placing a sick fish in a mild salt bath for several days, or feeding it finely chopped bits of earthworm, will restore it to health.

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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!

For McKinney and his wife are running a new kind of livestock farm—and . raising a fine flock of rats. Last year they harvested a $10,000 “crop” from their rat farm and they’re expanding all the time. To meet the specialized medical demand for thoroughbred rats and mice, they are shipping more than 500 a week to leading laboratories. Soon they expect to make that figure a round thousand.

Science needs these testing animals to fight cancer, to test for pregnancy and venereal disease; to study dietary diseases like rickets, and to mobilize our health forces against germ warfare and atomic radiation. Some of his rats “stood in” for humans at the Bikini atom-bomb tests. Mice were used in developing the latest hope in the war on cancer—teropterin, which reduced the suffering and prolonged the life of the late Babe Ruth.

McKinney was a professional singer but three years as chief inspector in a Long Island City war plant proved too much for his nerves and left him at 34 too jittery to continue his job or to return to a singing career.

“What else can you do?” his doctor asked as he was convalescing during the spring of 1945.

Searching his mind, he thought of his hobby and said, “Raise white mice.”

Anybody else might have snickered. Dr. Edwin Zabrisky didn’t. He knew of the soaring laboratory demand for fast-breeding rats and mice, because their cells resemble man’s and because they make ideal stand-ins for controlled experiments. Picking up the phone, he called Dr. Charles Slanetz, head of the Laboratory Animals Department over at Columbia University and director of a project for supplying Army and Navy researchers with testing stock. Dr. Slanetz asked McKinney to stop in.

From Dr. Slanetz, he learned that raising lab animals would be harder than just fooling around with white mice as a hobby. The test stock must be uniform and free of disease, or experiments wouldn’t mean a thing. The scientist recommended Sherman white rats and Swiss-Albino white mice, all highly inbred stock.

At Middletown, it all looked easy at first when the litters began appearing. McKinney had $100 worth of stock in his wife’s unusual train “luggage”—40 rats and 150 mice. He was confident he’d get a government contract and start selling soon.

The pregnancy period of a mother rat or mouse was only 21 days. There were about 10 to a litter. He’d sell some and keep the rest to build up his breeding stock. The young would be ready to breed 12 weeks after birth. It took the young only 21 days to be weaned and ready to sell, at $1.25 for a rat and 30 cents for a mouse.

He had 400 rats and mice—counting the new litters—when, one day that first December, a mysterious disease struck his little livestock. He thought it was just “snuffles”—a common cold that affects rats and mice and isn’t serious. Then the young started having convulsions. To add to his worries about this strange affliction, the mothers developed a pink ruff around the neck. That, he had heard, indicated lack of proteins in the food.

Nothing helped. The little fellows began dropping over dead. Then, in desperation, he tried a chicken feed recommended by a friend. It worked almost over night, like a miracle. The weak survivors got back on their feet. The boils and convulsions disappeared. The white hair became glossy again. Of the 400 rodents he had before that protein plague hit the attic, he had only 30 left.

After he licked that mysterious death, he determined to raise the healthiest rats possible. He began suspending the breeding cages from the ceiling, so they wouldn’t get any contamination from the floor. He set up germicidal lamps to keep down odors and purify the air. On each cage hangs a water bottle with a glass tube through which the rodents suck chlorinated water.

For bedding, he uses only fresh, kiln-dried shavings from a nearby sawmill. He refuses any that’s been lying around. There’s too much chance of mold or infection by “wild” rats and mice, which are carriers of the dread disease, paratyphoid. This is similar to typhoid fever in humans and ruins the animals for experiments. Paratyphoid, for instance, changes the percentage of calcium in their blood and makes them useless for research on rickets.

The Funny Farms business is based on keeping breeding stock at high virility. Males are used only six months, and females are kept a year, during which they raise three litters.

Many little things contribute to McKinney’s success in raising rats. He cleans the cages twice a week. Once a month he disinfects them with a mixture of carbolic acid, green soap and creosote. A fan keeps sucking purified air through the attic. He sees that this nice, clean air is always kept at 70 to 80 degrees, which he found to be the healthiest temperature for his little livestock.

Funny Farms now seems a little less strange to the neighboring villagers, though they’re still surprised that he can make good money out of rats. One oldtimer put it this way:

“Dawg-gone it! I kill rats and here comes McKinney who raises ‘em—makes money at it, too!”

His rats are overflowing the attic, and they’re busy getting some of the second-floor rooms ready for more.

Rats, of course, have an unlovely reputation. But McKinney loves the friendly little animals and he’s proud to raise them and call himself a rat farmer. They helped him escape a real ratrace in the big city. Not only are they giving him more money than he ever made before but he’s living a fine life of peace and quiet. Anybody who’s scrambled for a living in New York will know what he means.

ARMADILLOS BRED ON TEXAS RANCH
One of the most curious industries in existence is conducted by a rancher near Comfort, Texas, who breeds armadillos and from their shells and bony tails makes lamp shades and armadillo baskets. Starting with a few of the creatures and a small plot of ground, he now has a ranch that extends over many acres. The thousands of armadillos bred by him furnish a great part of the shells used in the manufacture of ornaments in this country. Since the animals leave their burrows only at night, their capture is limited to the hours after dark. As many as 250 of the shell producing creatures have been taken in a single night.

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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.

Soon afterwards, residents of the region began to notice a decrease in the number of mosquitoes. A single bat, Dr. Campbell discovered by dissection studies, will consume as many as 3,750 of these pests during a single night’s feeding. Since its introduction, the Campbell bat roost has been a source of revenue as well as a laboratory for the study of the strange little creatures it houses. Visiting bats, tens of thousands of them that choke the interior and often hang in great bunches from the outside eaves, pay their rent by adding to the accumulation of guano in the roost.

Once a year, Campbell cleans this deposit from the interior, raking it down a chute at the bottom and sacking it up for sale. Bat guano is said to be a nearly perfect fertilizer. Sampled and labeled, as required by law, it sells for from five to ten cents a pound. Last year, the roost yielded nearly 6,000 pounds of guano. In fact, so profitable has the unique venture become that quantities of the special lure used for attracting bats, and detailed plans for establishing similar roosts, have been sold to prospective bat raisers in several parts of the country, with an eye to both profit and mosquito control.

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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.

Few people know that beekeeping itself is a war industry of first importance, and that beekeepers are classed as “essential” war workers. Coatings containing beeswax protect every round of live ammunition, small or large, that goes off to war.

But this remarkable industry will be no less important after the war. In the production of our food supply, bees do a job far more essential than just storing honey. Farmers depend on them to pollinate at least 50 important crops. Many varieties of apples and other fruits will bear almost no fruit unless pollinated by bees. So growers are rapidly learning the trick of hiring small colonies of bees to work in their orchards, gardens, and cattle-grazing fields just during blossom time.

Pollen which bees bring to the hive and feed their young is rich in valuable vitamins and minerals. Important medical uses may be found for it. And the 5,000,000 colonies of honeybees in this country will gather in a single year as much as 350,000.000 pounds of pollen—nearly twice the amount of our annual honey crop!

Because bees Contribute so richly to our comfort, health, and prosperity, and because they are such fascinating creatures in themselves, scientists have long taken the keenest interest in them. There are various basic races among honeybees. Each is distinct from the others in size, color, markings, length of tongue, size of the honey sac, and so forth. For nearly a century man has been trying to learn just what characteristics in bees make for better honey producers. and trying to improve on nature by careful mating of selected queen bees with selected drones.

Entomologists of the Department of Agriculture and state agricultural experiment stations have been trying to put this study on a more scientific basis. This means making careful measurements of the length of the tongues of worker bees, the size of their honey sacs, their weight, and the amount of nectar they are capable of carrying. By comparing these measurements with the honey production of experimental bee colonies, bee experts determine scientifically the relation between the physical characteristics of bees and their usefulness as pollinators and honey producers.

The length of a bee’s tongue is highly important. A bee will not work a flower in which the nectar is too deep inside for her to reach. As a result that variety of plant will suffer from lack of pollination.

American entomologists are far more interested, however, in producing strains of bees that are more energetic, hardier, and more resistant to bee diseases.

A stingless bee has long been sought by beekeepers the world over. But the gentler strains have so far proved to be inferior honey producers, and entomologists consider it a waste of time to try to develop bees that literally have no stings.

How do bee breeders help nature to produce better and better bees? Until recently the only method known was one worked out by European breeders a hundred years ago. They selected the best queens and the best drones and carried them to some isolated spot in the mountains. They wanted to make sure that the queen did not mate with some stray drone of inferior strain.

Such selective breeding has shown truly amazing results. In tests at Madison, Wis., superior strains have produced as much as 250 pounds per colony in a good season over and above their own needs, while colonies of a poor strain often fail to make enough honey even to keep themselves alive through the winter.

Still more remarkable success has rewarded attempts to protect bees from disease. So virulent are the three varieties of foul brood that in a few seasons this bee disease may wipe out every bee colony in an area hundreds of square miles in extent. In the middle thirties the bee industry around Middlebury, Vt., was nearly wiped out by American foul brood. In 1936 a Middlebury beekeeper named Charles Mraz noticed that one of his colonies showed an almost miraculous ability to fight the disease. He shipped an egg-laying queen bee from that colony to the experiment station at Ames, Iowa. Today, seventh-generation descendants of that queen are fighting foul brood to a standstill. They seem able to detect the bacillus larva even before it is visible to the human eye.

The old method of selective breeding got results slowly, but it could never eliminate the element of chance.

But in 1926, Dr. Lloyd R. Watson of Alfred, N. Y., succeeded in fertilizing a selected queen bee artificially. In this way parentage could be controlled beyond a doubt. Watson’s method was taken up and improved by scientists of the Bureau of Entomology.

But one thing still stood in the way of getting practical results. And that one thing baffled the entomologists for 15 years. Because a colony of bees must be strong in numbers to survive, any colony mothered by an artificially mated queen would die out. Such queens never laid enough eggs.

Then, in the spring of 1940, two young American scientists at Baton Rouge, La., discovered that a queen bee makes more than one mating flight in her lifetime. This disproved what bee science had taught for a hundred years. To Otto Mackensen and William Roberts it suggested the idea of multiple mating by artificial means. The theory worked. Queens so treated proved able to lay sufficient fertile eggs to mother a strong colony. This summer—at the Madison, Wis., station, where Roberts now works—there are, for the first time in history, colonies of bees produced by artificial mating. By the old method, only one new generation could be produced in a year. The new method produces as many as ten.

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.

All of these buyers are in constant need of the hedgehogs, for the animals do not live long in captivity. This man has been catching hedgehogs more than 20 years and has shipped thousands of them. In a single month, a few years ago, he shipped three tons; and one shipment to England, which, by the way, is one of the largest customers for hedgehogs, in the spring of 1922, required four horses to haul it to the railroad station.

The trapping is all done in the summer and at night. The best time for catching the animals is between 9:00 p. m. and 2:00 a. m., and there is no better hunting ground than an apple orchard. The hedgehogs come there to feast upon the apples, of which they are exceedingly fond. The outfit for catching them consists of an old washboiler, the cover fastened on one side by means of a wire hinge; a long pole, and a pair of heavy gauntlet gloves for protection against the quills, which the animal has a disagreeable habit of “throwing” when in danger. The pole is used to dislodge the hedgehog from the tree limb on which it may be found. Once the animal is on the ground, the trapper must step lively or his prize is gone. Clumsy as it looks, the hedgehog makes a quick getaway when frightened, and the darkness of night is a further help to it. It is a rush forward, a quick throw of the boiler over the escaping animal, a deft overturning of the boiler, and closing of the cover. It is all over in a jiffy, providing the trapper’s aim is good. A specially constructed box, lined with galvanized iron, is part of the outfit, and is used for taking the night’s catch back home.

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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.

Successful raisers estimate that it costs about seven cents per pound to raise rabbits commercially, but this figure is apt to vary depending on the price of grain. Returns to the raiser usually run from fourteen to sixteen cents per pound live weight. Although rabbits thrive in cold weather the biggest profits are made in southerly states where the mild winters permit breeding four times a year. Profits depend a great deal upon starting out with a good breed. “Most commercial rabbit men specialize in the white New Zealand rabbit,” says D. Monroe Green, president of the National Rabbit Institute. “This type has a desirable white fur and has been developed by scientific breeding into a fine commercial animal. It commands a higher market price than do varieties that have a lower percentage of usable flesh. A good white New Zealand should have a low set body, deep shoulders, and short legs, neck, and ears.

“One mistake beginners are apt to make is to start out with poor stock. Good breeding stock costs five dollars per animal and up. A few superior animals can be the nucleus of a large and growing group of rabbits. Young does that show promise can be held from the market and added to the breeders. A good doe should be expected to earn at least six dollars net in marketable young after all expenses every year.”

A doe can be bred at the age of six months and may be bred four times a year thereafter. The young are born within a month’s time and from six to eight are saved out of each litter. The young animals are ready for the market at the age of two months, when they should weigh approximately four pounds. Butchers like all the animals to come within half a pound of that weight.

Without help and with the right equipment, one man can care for about 500 breeding does, although most people who are raising rabbits keep a smaller number and take care of them as a part-time occupation. One woman who started in three years ago with five does and one buck now maintains 100 working does in backyard hutches. A few hours work per day brings her a steady income of from forty to fifty dollars per month.

“In the first place,” Green explains, “one should prepare a proper place in which to keep the rabbits. The small animals need plenty of light and fresh air. They should be protected from heat and moisture. In the south the hutches may be kept under a simple roof but in the east and north the lower half of the walls of the rabbit house should be boarded in, leaving the upper part of the walls open except for canvas curtains that can be dropped during rain and storms. The animals need a protective roof even during the summer because their fur coats shouldn’t be exposed to hot sun. In hot weather a sprinkling system on top of the roof will help lower the temperature under it. A dirt or concrete floor under the hutches is best.

“The individual hutches should have ten square feet of floor space. Standard dimensions are four feet long, two and a half feet wide, and two feet high. The top, back, and ends should be built of boards if you live in a section having a cold winter climate, while if the climate is mild the top and back may consist of one-inch wire netting, allowing better circulation of air. The floor of the hutch should consist of five-eighths-inch mesh metal hardware cloth or netting, so that droppings can fall to the floor and be swept away. Consistent and complete sanitation is of the first importance. The hutches should be suspended about four feet above the ground by supports extending down from the roof as a protection from other animals. When eight or ten weeks old young animals have to be placed in individual hutches to prevent them from fighting.

“A two-compartment hutch saves time in feeding. The two full-size compartments are divided by a wire-mesh feeding rack into which hay and other greens may be placed, permitting both rabbits to reach the same food supply. A trough below the rack is provided as a place for hard foods. Nest boxes in which the does may raise their litters should be eighteen inches long, twelve inches wide, and thirteen inches high. A round door at one end should be seven inches in diameter, raised five inches from the bottom of the box. That will keep the young from climbing out until they can take care of themselves. The nest box should be roofed in cold weather and both the top and the bottom should be removable to facilitate cleaning and disinfecting. Some rabbit raisers use two tiers of hutches, one above the other, to conserve space, but cleaning is easier in single tiers.”

Greens and water are the main items of diet, any green hay such as alfalfa, clover, or even peanut hay being acceptable. All hay, of course, should be well cured and never musty or moldy. Oats, barley, wheat, and corn are also fed to the animals to balance their diet, with occasional small amounts of sulphur, charcoal, and cod-liver oil. Rabbits like carrots and should receive one occasionally. A block of salt should be placed in each hutch so that the rabbit may nibble at it. Feeding instructions and other hints in caring for rabbits are contained in bulletins issued by the Department of Agriculture and by some state universities.

Given proper care, rabbits usually remain healthy and free from many afflictions that trouble other animals. Two serious diseases, however, a nasal trouble known as snuffles and a worm infection called coccidiosis, are incurable. Rabbits infected by either should be destroyed at once and their hutches thoroughly sterilized to prevent spreading the disease. Most rabbit raisers feed their animals twice a day. Their appetite is a good indication of their state of health.

There are a number of other commercial breeds aside from the white New Zealand, including the red New Zealand, Flemish, Chinchilla, and Angora. The last two are raised exclusively for their fur or wool, which is extremely high priced. “Some people who have tried to raise rabbits in the past have dropped it when they failed to make money,” declares Green, “but they shouldn’t blame the rabbits. Raising them is a pleasant and profitable occupation and success with them takes proper management and attention to details just the same as in any other business. The fundamentals of success are good breeding stock, proper equipment and the right care.”

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. Eddies of water created by a high-pressure water jet from a pipe animated the meat strips and made them appear to swim about on the surface. Frogs came hopping from all directions and snapped up the morsels with relish. Now Parker buys his own horses and has them butchered at a near-by processing plant to provide food for his amphibian livestock. Horse meat is fed to the frogs twice a week, and they thrive on it so well that Parker figures in seven months he can make about $400 profit on an original $100 investment, with a batch of 1,000 meat-eating frogs raised for the market.

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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.

Yet these are the only known chinchillas in the world that are reproducing in captivity. In warm California weather and the colder winters of the northwest, they continue to thrive, six years after M. F. Chapman brought them from the Andes. In that time, they have increased more than thirteen fold despite losses from theft and disease.

Today the three herds at Idaho Falls, Idaho, Logan, Utah, and Inglewood, Calif., are worth a king’s ransom. Single pairs for breeding have sold as high as $5,000. One coat made up of 140 pelts has brought $45,000. Single skins in New York and Los Angeles sell for $200 to $300. Smugglers occasionally offer pelts in the world’s fur capitals, since neither live animal nor pelt may be legally rmoved from South America, yet only one man, a New York furrier, is known to have a sufficient number to manufacture a full-length chinchilla coat.

Chinchilla fur is rare, beautiful. It once was worn only by monarchs and their queens, but the passing of monarchies and their fabulously wealthy courts has made the fur available to others. Not more than a dozen chinchilla coats exist in any American city; possibly not over a hundred in the world.

One naturally thinks of Russian sable when discussing rare furs. The great value of that fur comes not so much from its beauty as from the difficulty of trapping and matching the sables. Often two or three years is required to find a sufficient number of sable pelts to make one coat. Yet sables cannot be reared in captivity while chinchillas reproduce as well in American pens as in the Andes 16,000 feet above sea level.

They live their new lives in spacious stalls measuring six by sixteen feet; one male and six females to each stall. From two litters a year in the wild, they have increased in many instances to three in captivity, the average of two young in each litter remaining the same.

“There are fewer chinchilla sales than sables,” I was told by H. W. Blaine, a veteran fur expert, “but we account for that largely by its scarcity. There probably are not more than three chinchilla coats in America made up ready for sale. Whenever a furrier receives an inquiry for a chinchilla coat, he scours the country for pelts, buying them in lots of from three to a dozen. When he pieces them together they achieve a value of from $15,000 to $45,000, depending upon the number and quality of pelts.”

Ermine, one of the most beautiful furs, white and blue fox, caracul are all found in women’s wardrobes, yet chinchilla remains the most desired and least attainable fur in the world. Dyed rabbit at one-fortieth of the cost often is offered as a substitute, but an expert can tell a rabbit coat from a chinchilla at a distance of 100 feet.

Chinchillas are rabbit-like in appearance, though much smaller than the average rabbit. Little larger than a man’s hand, they live among the Andean rocks. In captivity they spend much of their time in cavelike recesses of their pens. In the open, their protective coloring enables them to blend among the rocks and they can hardly be seen when on the run.

They emerge at dawn and at dusk to feed, eating the same vegetables and grains a domesticated chicken consumes, though hardly as much. Chapman says his feed bill averages not more than $1.80 a year per animal. They are subject in captivity to no more diseases than are American rabbits, and, when one dies, an autopsy usually reveals little balls of hair in the stomach. The chinchillas lick themselves and the long hairs pass with food into the stomach, where they remain undigested.

There are two commonly known species, although Chapman has had as many as five species growing together. Gradually four disappeared until he now has only the Chinchilla lanigera, found chiefly in the mountains of central and northern Chile. The skin is finer than that of other species and its color is a smoky gray with black markings, with the under parts a dead gray with a yellowish tinge.

As I held a fine male, stroking its long hairs, I realized why these rodents have been hunted since the remotest ages. Once the Incas wove warm cloth from their hairs, even domesticated them and ate the flesh after shearing the fleece. Though they have been known in South America for centuries, not until the turn of the century did any reach western markets. Immediately furriers became intensely interested and following the importation of a few skins to Paris, world-wide efforts began to bring chinchilla coats to wealthy men and women.

Yet Chapman is the only white man who has succeeded in raising them—and he has his difficulties. Someone recognized the tremendous value of the Chapman herd and in the dead of night stole into his mountain ranch at Tehachepi, Calif., (recently abandoned) and made away with thirty-five sturdy chinchillas. Sixteen were carrying young. The potential loss, therefore, amounted to fully seventy of the animals. Chapman, in swearing out warrants for the unknown culprits’ arrest, placed a value of $54,000 on the stolen animals.

Late last fall eighteen were traced to a ship bound for Germany. So closely did United States operatives press the hunt that they learned five died en route. Later one American confessed his part in the theft and today is paying the penalty in San Quentin prison. Two of those smuggled to Germany are alive today, all the others having perished. The other seventeen have not been traced.

Chapman’s chinchilla exploit is packed with drama. Formerly a mining engineer,he went to South America nine years ago for a mining syndicate. He made his headquarters high in the Andes of Chile and Peru and while living among the native Indians and Chileans became interested in the chinchillas. He had heard great tales of their former high position in the international fur trade. One man had exported 100,000 skins from Chile in 1884. In 1901 fully 1,000,000 skins were exported from that country.

San Pedro de Altacama was the most important local South American market then. From nearby Molinos, on the western border of La Plata, one man exported 3,000 dozen pelts annually for years. But the trade had languished, for the chinchillas had gradually disappeared from that region.

“White men cannot travel into the country where the chinchillas live,” Chapman told me, “When I first became interested in them, I sent out a couple of Indians to hunt them. Soon I had twenty-three Chileans and Indians on the trail. Yet the net result of all that hunting was a dozen animals. I finally left South America with eleven animals; and arrived at Los Angeles with a dozen. An expectant mother had given birth to two while on the high seas and we managed to save one of them.

“My CHINCHILLAS came from the highlands above Potrerillos in the province of de Altacama. I lived at an altitude of 11,300 feet but the trappers went a mile higher. Strange as it may sound to people unaccustomed to living in the wild, they actually caught several with their hands. The chinchilla is one of the most curious animals alive. Fire a gun and he runs into his hole; but a moment later you see his little head sticking out as he looks around the mountain.

“The hunters take advantage of this curiosity and often take a seat in front of a hole and wait for hours, hoping a chinchilla will make a personal appearance. Sometimes their patience was rewarded as a chinchilla would emerge slowly from his hole and crawl over the leg blocking his path. Then the trapper would grab and grab quick, for a chinchilla is as quick as a rabbit, though he can’t run as fast.”

Through a combination of circumstances, Chapman, who as a youth raised rabbits and squirrels for their hides at Grants Pass, Ore., was set down where chinchillas were considered to be as abundant as anywhere on the continent. Meantime several expeditions had spent fortunes in a fruitless effort to catch and transplant several pair to the United States or to Europe.

Undismayed by the many failures of which he had heard, Chapman continued his search. At last, his runners brought him eleven grown animals. For two years he kept them at an altitude of 11,000 feet, studying their habits, watching over their health. Then he carried them down the mountain and stopped a year 8,000 feet above the sea. As the ice began to thaw after the third year, he loaded them in wire cages, strapped them on the backs of burros and completed the journey to the sea.

THE worst part of the long trip lay ahead, the sea voyage. He boarded a steamer from Iquique, Chile, with the little fellows panting for breath. Accustomed to thriving in freezing gales far below zero, they suddenly were catapulted into a summer heat none ever had experienced. For forty days and nights, Chapman kept them in virtual refrigerators —ice-chilled cages curtained with moist canvas. Yet they suffered so that many times during that trip he applied ice packs to their heads as various animals passed out in the heat.

“To complicate matters,” Chapman commented wryly, as we squatted over one of his finest pairs at his Inglewood, Calif., ranch, “when only four days out from California they shed their fur and we had to wrap the whole batch in blankets to keep them from freezing. At last, after what seemed an eternity, we landed a dozen under permit of the U. S. Biological Survey, the first, and last, to reach the United States alive.”

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Grow “ERMINE” Coats in Back Yard Rabbit Hutch

Furriers pay rabbit growers in United States over $30,000,000 a year for pelts, from which are made fur coats selling from $300 to $5,000 each. This article tells you how you set up in rabbit raising as a backyard pastime and reap the biggest profits from smallest outlay of cash.

by H. H. DUNN

MARY PALMER, who teaches school for $1,500 a year at San Diego, California, came out of the winter of 1930-31, with the determination to have a fur coat for the next winter.

“If I start saving now, and go in debt a little in the fall, I can get myself one of those $300 coats for a Christmas present,” she told her father.

“If you will give me an hour of your time every day, from now until next October,” replied her father, “I will give you a fur coat that you cannot buy for five times $300 and it will cost not more than $30, probably half that amount.”

As a matter of fact, for this is a true story, Mary’s father produced the fur coat on the date promised, and Mary sold it for $650 to a furrier, who, in turn, sold it for $1575. Then Mary’s father gave her another just like it. The total cost of the coats to Mr. Palmer was less than $15 each, and, with their trimmings, they represented an actual outlay of not more than $35 each.

This is how the coats were produced from the back half of the city lot on which stands the Palmer home: In the spring of 1930, Mr. Palmer bought three rabbits, rather small, weighing only six or seven pounds each, with short, thick, rather light brown fur, of the density and “pile” of good plush. This particular variety of domestic rabbit is called Castor Rex, and it is bred in solid colors of brown, black, white, blue and the so-called “red” of rabbit fanciers, in reality a rather dark roan.

Mr. Palmer chose the brown variety because of the difficulty he had had in clipping and dyeing the pelts of white rabbits, which now furnish 86 varieties of fur — from “ermine” to “seal” —to the trade of this country.

This Castor Rex is adapted to all climates of the Temperate Zone, and endures the snowy winter of Wisconsin as well as it does the rainy season of southern California. The three animals cost Mr. Palmer $20 —since he bought them for their healthy condition and their fur, not for their paper pedigrees.

He built for them a three-tier hutch, such as is shown in the accompanying photograph, from free plans supplied by the College of Agriculture of the University of California, at a cost of $5.90. Two other hutches, which he built later, cost a little less.

Food for Rabbits Grown in Back Yard

On the back of the lot, an open space about 50×50 feet, Mr. Palmer planted alfalfa, chard, carrots, and a small patch of lettuce, all “crops” being rotated, and the lettuce grown not for food, but to supply the vitamin found to be necessary to rabbit mothers in the production of large litters.

By the fall of 1931, he had 97 rabbits, including the original three. Of these, 81 weighed from one and one-half to two pounds, dressed, the ideal size for marketing. Carefully kept figures showed that these had cost him 9.7 cents a pound to produce, net meat weight.

This figure, however, is too high, as 7 to 9 cents is the range allowed by rabbit-farmers who raise these animals for market. However, Mr. Palmer received 15 cents a pound for the meat, dressed. For the pelts, he could have obtained 50 to 55 cents each, or 15 to 20 cents more than the current market price for the ordinary white-rabbit pelt, which has to be clipped and dyed.

#1575 Coat Made for Less Than #35

Forty pelts were required to make each of Mary’s coats. Against these pelts, he charged off $17.70 for hutches, and $11.65 for feed, a total of $29.35, or, roughly, $14.70 for each coat. The $18 which he received for the dressed meat almost paid for the original breeding stock, which he still has, as he has the hutches.

Making of the coats, with their trimmings, cost, again roughly, $20 each, bringing their total cost to the “less than $35″ Mr. Palmer had promised. The furrier sold the coat which he purchased from Mary under the name of “Siberian Sea-Otter.” Had it been genuine sea-otter — an animal now almost extinct — the price would have been nearer $15,000 than the $1575 he asked and obtained.

The hour-a-day which Miss Palmer gave in return for her coats went into the garden and in feeding the rabbits the vegetation produced from it, as well as the dry rolled-oats which is the staple diet of the domestic rabbit. Mr. Palmer devoted an hour a day to the same work. This was all the labor given to the fur-producers.

Meanwhile, in Chula Vista, a suburb of San Diego, E. F. Slinkard, another rabbit-farmer, was producing animals of the White Flemish strain that weigh 20 pounds at fifteen months. They dress off to 14 or 15 pounds, when ready for the oven, cost 7 to 9 cents a pound to produce, and sell for 14 to 17 cents a pound.

Rabbit Pelts Make 86 Kinds of Fur

Here, then, are the two ends of an industry in which more than $5,000,000 is invested in one California county alone, and which represents an investment of approximately $70,000,000 throughout the United States. In 1930, the latest available figures showed that the industry of making men’s felt hats alone took care of 100,000 rabbit skins daily.

Investigation by national and state government experts show that rabbits provide 86 different kinds of furs, from ermine to French sable. The only competitor the rabbit has as a fur-bearing animal today is the common muskrat of Louisiana, East Texas, Mississippi and other states.

It has been found that, taking a rough average throughout the United States, 300 rabbits may be raised annually on an area 50×60 feet—the average vacant space on the rear of a city lot. Attempts to rear more than this number on such an area usually results in loss, sometimes in failure. The greatest proportionate successes have been attained by those who raise these animals primarily for their own and their families’ meat supply, disposing of surplus meat to neighborhood markets, and of carefully preserved furs to established buyers.

Prices paid to the grower for meat vary from 12.5 cents, to 20 cents a pound, usually from 14 to 17 cents. Pelts bring from 35 cents a pound for the commoner and smaller varieties, of which 2.5 to 3 pelts make a pound, to 50, 60 and even 75 cents each for the rarer and more finely furred animals.

The pelts of the great majority of varieties of rabbits are used as “furs”; that is, the skin is left intact as removed, and the fur or hair clipped to the desired thickness and then the entire pelt is dyed to any color wanted. This means that the rabbit must be killed to obtain the skin. The Angora rabbit, however, is clipped, and the long hair woven into felt or into such fur as required. These animals supply an average of three “crops” of hair every two years; though in some favorable climates, two a year may be cut. The Angora, however, is not so profitable as a meat rabbit, and is more difficult to rear.

The common combination rabbit, which furnishes “ermine” from its pelt, and 8 to 12 pounds of marketable meat, is the white Flemish giant, in which strain has been developed the new 20-pound animal. The New Zealand red is another large animal, primarily raised for meat, but supplying a fur which, while it has to be dyed, is heavy and suitable for the manufacture of such fur garments as American seal, Arctic seal, Baltic black and brown fox, castorette, chinchilla, and more than a score of others.

U. S. Fur Trade Uses 125,000,000 Pelts a Year

For such fur garments, consisting of 40 to 80 rabbit skins each, the retail price ranges from $300 to $5,000. In England alone, this business of growing rabbits at home has increased from a production of about 150,000 pelts in 1929 to an estimated output of 1,500,000 skins in 1932. British rabbit-breeders estimate that at least 85 per cent of these rabbits are raised on backyard areas covering not more than 200 square feet—a strip, say 20 feet long by 10 feet wide.

There are more than 200,000 rabbit-growers in the United States, and this does not include probably one-fourth as many more who merely keep a few rabbits to cut down their meat costs. The fur trade in the United States alone consumes more than 125,000,000 rabbit skins a year, approximately half of which is made into fur garments and fur trimmings for women.

Furriers pay rabbit-growers of the United States nearly $30,000,000 a year for pelts, and slightly less than $25,000,000 annually to foreign producers. Babbit-growers estimate that $5 a year net profit from each breeding doe, who will produce about 20 young animals annually, is a fair average, especially in the larger plants, where several hundred such does are maintained. Back-yard rabbit-growers sometimes reach $10 to $12 a year profit from a single female.

Original costs of these breeding does, about one year old, is $5 at the present time, though a year ago it was $7.50, with $10 as a top price, except for fancy stock, such as the Castor Bex, mentioned at the beginning of this story; the Himalaya, and some of the small blues and reds. It probably is best for the home raiser of rabbits to avoid these fancy breeds and devote his attention to the well-established Flemish and New Zealand strains, which are hardier, more adaptable in their feeding habits, and which give greater weight at an earlier marketing age.

What Rabbits Like for Food

The hutches and carrying cases which have been found most successful are pictured herewith in such manner that they need no description. It has been found that a maximum of two ounces of feed daily for each pound of weight of the animal gives the best results. This feed consists mainly of alfalfa, well dried, and coarse, dry, rolled oats, such as is fed to other livestock.

Carrots, green alfalfa, lettuce, green barley, chard and beet leaves, are fed in small amounts. In every instance, the most successful growers insist that the rabbits should be given time to clean up virtually all their feed from one meal, before they are given another. An abundance of water .is an essential, but it must be placed in dishes fixed at such a height in the hutch that the rabbit must stand up to drink. The back-yard rabbit grower should first of all obtain and study the voluminous literature published by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C, and of a number of the states. Most of this may be obtained through the agricultural colleges of the universities of the various states. All of it is accurate, conservative, and the result of actual experiences over a long period of time in a highly-specialized industry. Furthermore, all of it is free to the interested individual.

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