Fur
Farms
Article from Jul
- Aug 2007 Buckeye Trapper
by
Jack Hatfield
Believe it or not, fur farms are important to trappers. Why?
Their production often controls what wild furs bring on the marketplace.
Mink do so almost religiously. They often control muskrat and
wild mink prices.
I retired from buying fur ten or fifteen years ago. Since that
time, I have not kept up with the fur industry like I once did.
Consequently, the figures I’m about to quote may or may
not still be pertinent to today’s fur business. The world
marketplace could consume 35-40 million ranched mink annually
without harming ordinary price structures for them. It costs a
mink farmer (rancher) $20-$22 to produce a mink pelt. When mink
were overproduced in any given year, that often took down the
per pelt price below its production cost. Supply and demand controls
the ranch mink market unlike anything else. You will see many,
many mink ranchers put out of business during any year when production
exceeds demand. Selling a $20-$22 mink for $15 or less kills them.
Scandinavian mink ranchers have played all sorts of games in the
past. All were meant to make competitors go broke so they could
enjoy a higher market. In many cases, it worked. Their governments
subsidized them by encouraging them to produce massive amounts
of mink during a season. That resulted in 50 million or more pelts
hitting the market during that year. Prices fell far below twenty
bucks and our American ranchers, not being subsidized by our government,
went belly up. The following year, the Scandinavians had a field
day because much of their competition had been eliminated. Mink
ranching can truly be a cutthroat business.
I had one friend who was one of the country’s biggest mink
ranchers. The games the Scandinavians played had no impact on
him. Here’s why: He was wealthy enough that he did not have
to sell his mink during the down-market year. He had his tanned,
put into cold storage, and he sold them when the market bounced
back. Of course, that can also result in driving down market prices
if enough mink ranchers do it at the same time. They can release
all those mink on the market at the same time and increase the
supply beyond the annual consumption rate. Most are aware of that
so they filter them into the market slowly. Once they’re
tanned, there’s no need to unload them all at once and hurt
market prices. It has happened.
Today’s mink prices were some of the highest ever recorded.
I’m told they were responsible for the increase in demand
for muskrats last year. The muskrat shortage, and that increased
demand, resulted in the highest prices I’ve seen paid for
muskrats. Mink users often turn to the cheaper muskrats to produce
fur garments when mink pelts go out of sight. Never believe they
don’t have a connection because they do. Watch for ‘rat
prices to drop if ranch mink are overproduced next year and their
prices return to normal. It happens all the time and has throughout
the fur business’ history. Mink ranchers, just like trappers,
tend to get greedy and overproduce the market when big bucks are
flashed in front of them. That’s one thing that makes the
fur business so volatile.
When I bought furs, we’d lost over 90% of the business to
fox and mink ranchers. That meant that 90% off all garments were
made from ranched furs. It’s no mystery why. You can’t
even think about comparing wild furs with ranched ones. Fur farming
has become an exact science. Breeding of mink and fox has become
almost as genetically perfect as animal husbandry gets. Colors
and sizes are so perfect that a blind man can match the pelts
and produce fantastic fur garments. Their sizes don’t require
as many pelts as they once did. The fur quality beats the bejeebers
out of wild fur. Ranch furs are killed during their ten-day peak
primeness period, which all furs have. Wild furs rarely are taken
during this time, so there’s no comparison with their primeness
quality. There are little or no differences in the fur quality
of ranched furs; there are plenty in wild ones. If you are a garment
maker, which would you rather have to work with?
The major reason wild furs are used to produce garments anymore
is their price. If they weren’t cheaper than ranched fur,
we trappers would have no market – period. Certain wild
critters cannot be pen raised or ranched while still producing
good quality fur. Raccoon are one of them. There are breeds of
raccoon that are pen raised and their fur quality is horrible.
One, the Finn Raccoon, is huge with horrible-looking fur. I’ve
seen them on world auctions in Canada. I would not want to own
a garment made from those big, ugly, wooly-looking rascals. All
breeds of ranched foxes originated from the original red fox.
Reds threw those mutants, and two mutants were bred to produce
the new breed. That’s how silvers, crosses, blacks, arctic,
and all breeds of foxes got started. They are glorified reds.
I’ve never seen or known anyone who raised, or even attempted
to raise, grey foxes. Greys aren’t related to reds and belong
to their own species. They are more cat-like than canine. Can
they be pen raised? It’s doubtful. Someone would have farmed
them if they could. There are some critters in nature man simply
cannot duplicate; greys might be one of them.
There is a demi-buff ranch mink that is an imitation wild mink.
They are brown with their white spots where wild mink have them.
I’ve never seen one with the same fur quality of a wild
mink. Most of them have shorter fur. Most are also twice as big
as wild mink. Again, man cannot duplicate what nature can; he
can only imitate it. That’s why there will always be a market
for wild mink.
Wild mink have a peak primeness period of ten days. In our section
of Ohio, that’s usually somewhere between Thanksgiving and
Christmas. Not every wild mink reaches its peak primeness period
at the same time; it varies with each individual mink. It may
be genes, weather, or diet that determine it, or a combination
of all three. Regardless, our mink trapping season spans several
months. What are our chances of catching one during its peak ten
days? Ranchers check their mink for peak primeness daily and when
it’s there, they kill them, freeze them on the carcass,
and process so many per day. Their fur quality is one for one
for one. There’s no question about primeness. Foxes are
the same way. That’s why ranched fur has taken control of
the fur industry. It’s why wild fur is one of the most undervalued
commodities in the world. We should consider ourselves lucky to
even have a market for our wild furs. Yes, ranched furs are that
good.
Will wild fur prices ever come back as strong as they once were
fifty to a hundred years ago? As long as there are ranches producing
better quality furs, don’t expect it to happen. We should
be grateful that muskrats, grey fox, otters, and beavers cannot
be ranched. Our market would be non-existent if they could.
Make no mistake about it, there will always be a market for fur
garments as long as men have wives and mistresses and winters
produce cold weather. Synthetics have been made in many different
forms, but no manmade fabric can ever repel the cold like a natural
fur skin. Many have tried to produce such fabrics; furs always
win. Man cannot out-produce Mother Nature when it comes to repelling
the cold. As trappers, that’s good to know because it means
we’ll always have a fur market for our skins.
Ranching foxes and mink is not an easy business. It’s always
a crapshoot because you never know during any given year how many
pelts of any species or color will be raised and put on the market.
Whenever it’s more than the market will bear, losses come
and all the work and money you put into feeding your critters
will result in you losing money. That’s frustrating and
it always looms as a possibility during any given year. you have
to be a gambler to be a fur rancher. Regardless of the business,
you’ll have good years and bad ones. They are guaranteed
so you have to put enough aside from your good ones to carry you
through the bad. If you cannot afford to do that, stay away from
ranching furs. You’ll go broke. I’ve seen many do
so.
Because the nature of fur ranching is how I just described it,
there are few small ranchers left. Like all farming, the small
farmers have virtually disappeared. Large corporations have taken
control of fur farming almost worldwide. Sometimes they end up
cutting their own throats and each other’s. Fashion is a
fickle thing in the fur business. It comes and goes like the wind.
One year the latest rage may be sapphire colored mink coats. Nobody
foresaw it, so enough of that color strain wasn’t produced.
They sell for ten bucks more than any other color, because there’s
not enough to supply the demand. The ranchers hear this so they
increase their numbers of sapphire mink, and the next season they
don’t sell. Another color has replaced them as the hottest
seller because of the fickle fashion trends. That happens frequently
so trying to guess what color will be hot one year and cold the
next is pure speculation. When you speculate, it’s always
a gamble that usually produces more losers than winners. I’ve
seen ranchers driven out of business because they overproduced
a particular color strain and couldn’t unload them. Mink
ranchers can be their own worst enemies. That’s because
they’re always a year behind fashion trends and must decide
almost a year in advance which color strains they want to breed
heavily. The whimsical fashion trend has put many of them under
when they guessed wrong. Again, if you’re large and wealthy
enough to have your pelts tanned and held over until their particular
color comes back into demand, you’ll be assured of a profit.
Big fur ranchers can; small ones cannot.
As a trapper, I’d like to see ranched foxes and mink go
to a hundred bucks per pelt. It probably won’t happen because
ranchers won’t allow it. They’ll produce too many
pelts to prevent it. The more ranched furs cost, the more appealing
wild furs become as an alternative fur. Sure, they’re harder
to match and work with. But if you can buy them for half or less
of ranched goods, that’ll bring down the cost of the garment
that is produced and you’ll sell it quicker. Besides that,
some wild furs produce more beautiful garments than any ranched
fur can. It all comes down to the taste of the individual buying
the garment and what they’re willing to pay. The bulk of
the price of any garment made comes from the price of the raw
skins it took to make it. If a furrier has to charge eight thousand
dollars for a ranched coat because he has six thousand tied up
in it, he’ll opt to make a wild red fox coat for five thousand
dollars because he’ll only have three thousand tied up in
it and still make his two thousand. Besides that, the cheaper
coat will sell faster too. Fur coat buyers do shop prices. ###
Jack Hatfield, 14681 Lisbon Road, Salem, OH 44460.
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