MEETING A MINK

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 17, 21 January 1939, Page 19

MEETING A MINK

FURS "IN THE FLESH"

BREEDING FARMS IN

ENGLAND

Many people, myself included, dislike meeting their food socially while it is still alive, comments Charles Graves in the "Daily Mail." You know what I mean—selecting your own live trout out of a tank before having it cooked specially for you seems rather heartless somehow.

But any women who might shrink from meeting their furs socially in advance, as it was possible to do recently in London during, the exhibition of fur-bearing animals at Tattersalls' need have no qualms.

For a live mink is almost more vicious than a ferret, and fitches are equally unpleasant. (I confess, however, that blue foxes look rather attractive animals.) Today there are sixty mink farms in Great Britain, the largest having as many as 500 animals.

A mink has a litter pi four or.five in tha spring. When their fur is colour-prime, usually in December or January, they are pelted. Beforehand, of course, they are killed painlessly. Some are chloroformed; others have an injection of 2 c.c. of ether and chloroform. Others are allowed to lick a piece of cotton wool with, cyanide of potassium on it. Death is instanr taneous. . . \ CHEAP TO FEED. ; Running fur farms is now rapidly becoming a new Old School Tie profession.; A fellow wearing a Stonyhurst tie told me that he began a -year ago: and now has 75 minks. ' * They: cost only a penny a day to feedV though the diet is somewhat complicated. It • consists of eggs', oats, bran, milk, vegetables, blood, and mineral salts. But you also have to give-them a condition .powder twice a week; if you I really want1 to '-'turn: them into plus minks.. ': -'x ''■ ' ..--■■ "■ ;..-. ,-\ / ■'•; ■ '

The price of the skins depends largely on the Hudson Bay 7 market. Eighteen ; months ago they stood as high as £12 each. Now they are down to £4, but may rise again. Incidentr ally, it takes 80 or 90 mink skins to make a full-length coat and 30 or 40 to make a cape. :

Fitches cost barely a shilling a yeaTj to feed, any old offal suiting, them down to the ground. They have litters of eight, but the skins only fetch something in the neighbourhood of •£1 apiece.. . - ■ ■ ■ '. Blue fox skins stand at £14 each, and each blue fox costs about 30s to feed from its birth in May to the time it; is chloroformed. The great .expert on these is George Ay 1 win,, who has one fox farm in Yorkshire and another in Manitoba.

He tells me that the silver fox farm industry is- almost out on its feet in Canada, or perhaps I should say out on its paws; and he prophesies that at least a third of the Canadian silver fox farmers will go out of business this winter.