Mink!

Several years ago, when the kids were just toddlers, Dan's mom was in town and she took us to visit a family friend, Ron, who lives in Deming, WA.  Each year, Ron takes his vacation and drives out to MT to hunt on Dan's parent's property.   Donna is in town again to visit us and she really wanted to make another trip out to visit Ron... So, this morning we loaded up the car and drove to Deming.

Visiting Ron is quite entertaining because Ron is a mink farmer.  One of only two in Whatcom/Skagit counties (down from 63 in the heydey of mink farming in the 1970s) and one of only six in Washington state.   Before we could get to the mink, Henry and Alice discovered the barn kitties.  Fun!

 But then we moved on to the real action... mink!

 Alice loved them.  She was like a "mink whisperer" and had in-depth conversations with many of the mink.

 Ron was a gracious host and even brought out several of the mink for us to pet (heads and claws held down tightly with thick leather gloves).  The grey were soft - like a cat.   But the black and white - oh my.   Think of a mink coat.   Yep, that pretty much tells you what they felt like.

Ron happily answered my many mink questions and I learned:

• His mink farm currently has about 9,000 mink.   Around Thanksgiving, when the mink are about 6 months old, he will "pelt out" almost 7,000 of them.
• In the past, they used to kill them with lethal injection.  However, they now asphyxiate them.   Ron skins every single one of them himself - all 7,000 of them.
• They are then sent to a processing plant where the pelts are scraped and dried.   Then they go to an auction house.
• 85% of U.S. mink pelts are sold to China.  The remaining 15% go to Russia, Taiwan, Turkey, and Greece (mostly).
• The rule of thumb is that he needs to make $40/pelt in order to break even for the food, water, electricity, labor, etc.. of raising the mink.   This is considered a great year for mink, and he expects to get $50-100/pelt.
• The carcasses are sold to fishermen and used as crab bait.  In the past, when he used lethal injection, he couldn't do that because of the chemicals involved.  But now he gets 15 cents/lb for the carcasses and fishermen get some great crab bait.

We learned a lot more, but those were some of the highlights.

 They're so darn cute.

 Until you see those sharp claws.  And those really sharp teeth.

 Ahhh... so cute.  But don't be fooled!!

 Alice really liked these cinnamon-colored ones.

 They're incredibly curious and zip all around the cage when you're standing nearby.

 I loved the black ones.   So, so sleek and soft.

 The white ones were Henry's favorites.

 Henry was also a "mink whisperer."  This was so funny.   He was talking to them, making their little squeaky mink noise, and apparently the mink thought that was pretty great.  They were hypnotized.

 Maybe he has a future in mink farming?

 Alice has already told us that when she grows up, she's going to own a mink farm.  Hmm.  I told her she'd have to find somewhere else to live because the whole operation is rather fragrant.   Peww.

 Cute little pink paws.

 With really sharp claws.

 Some of the grey ones were really big.  Certain ones receive steroids to increase their size.

 The Pen Record Card is a crucial part of mink farming.  Shows all sorts of information related to breeding, age, and other historical data.   There have been some recent attacks on mink farms from animal activists which have caused all sorts of damage - sometimes the mink are let loose from their cages and other times all that's done is that the activists (the FBI classifies them as eco-terrorists) pull down these cards thus destroying the most important source of farming data.

 What a great tour!  We really enjoyed our time with Ron and his beautiful mink.   But after all that self-restraint ("Alice, don't you dare put your fingers next to those cages, they'll bite!!!"), Alice thought it was really nice to cuddle with a kitty.