While laws are being adopted by different States for the regulation of trapping to protect fur-bearing animals, it is time for those who expect to make money with fur in the future to begin raising their own animals. The time is almost here when trapping will be unprofitable. Fur animals will be too scarce to make anything at it. Then people will have to build farms in which to breed minks for their fur, and mink farms will become common. Minks are the most valuable fur-bearing animals in Louisiana, being the most numerous, and they are also the easiest and most profitable to breed for their fur. Breeding minks in Louisiana for their fur can be made a very profitable industry. There is more to be made at it than raising horses, hogs or cattle. After a farm is once completed and stocked, all expense is about over if there is a large-enough pond in it to supply the minks with sufficient food. Under the present condition of the fur market, each female will average a profit of forty dollars a year. A farm stocked for the first time during the winter with five hundred female minks should bring its owner the following winter approximately twenty thousand dollars. This is figured at three dollars a fur; but within three years the mink fur in Louisiana should be selling for what the mink fur in the North sold last season. With this increase in the price of fur, a farm stocked with the same number should bring forty thousand dollars. [Illustration: The Fur During the Summer Is Very Poor, and Not So Dark as It Is During the Winter.] [Illustration: An Excited Mink Trying to Climb.] Minks require little room, and thousands can be raised each year on a farm of ten acres. The larger the farm, however, the better chances they will have to procure food for themselves, as birds will enter a large farm more freely than a small one. For this reason, in building a mink farm the first and most important requirement is a good location. A small island consisting of low land covered with trees and grasses, with the opposite shore at least three-quarters of a mile distant, would make an excellent farm, provided the surrounding water supplies an abundance of small fishes. Such an island would, of course, preclude the necessity of using material for holding the minks in captivity. If a suitable island cannot be found, a good farm can be made with five or more acres of low swampy land having a natural growth of trees, grasses and underbrush, such as can be found in Southern Louisiana. But the piece of land selected for a farm must inclose a large pond, or several small ponds, containing a good quantity of small fishes, especially crayfish. The trees and grasses will attract birds, which, in addition to fish and rabbits, form a large part of food for the minks. Feeding minks is pretty costly, and is hardly to be considered by one entering the business of breeding them for their fur.