WILD-BE AST FARMS.
THE St. Louis Democrat (Colorado) contains an account of an "elk-farm" owned and created by an American gentleman named Captain Marcus Coon. The " elk " are wapiti-deer, much finer creatures than those whose name they bear in the States, and the locality and success of the experiment are sufficient to ; justify the pilgrimages of a thousand miles to see it, to which the St. Louis paper refers. The site of the farm is in that central mass of the Rocky Mountains which, descending through Montana and Wyoming, spreads all over Colorado, and, like the spider mountains of Argos, makes a tangle of deep valleys and encircling hills. The highest of these ranges is itself called the "Elk Range," as being the favourite home of the wapiti. The mountains dwindle, and are absorbed before they reach the plains of New Mexico; but in the Colorado chains is the watershed between east and west,—the sources of the greatest tributaries of the Mississippi, the South Platte River, and the Arkansas on the east, and of twelve great streams which join to form the Colorado River on the west. Between and among these rivers, on the dividing mountains and in the valleys, was, and in many parts still is, the southern stronghold of the great game of North America. The "big-horn" sheep must also have been common, to judge by the nomenclature of the district. In the north-west corner of the mouutain State, from the ranges west of North Park and Middle Park, rises the White River, one of the twelve tributaries of the Colorado, and it is near this valley that the "elk - farm" has been founded. The inclosure covers one hundred and sixty-three acres, forming a small park, through which runs the Big Beaver trout-stream, and the timber belts on the lower lines of the mountains are full of game. The farm is 6,500 ft. above the sea-level, and the elk wanders among the inclosed native timber and in the meadows by the river as freely inside the boundaries of their farm as if they were on the mountain beyond it.
The idea of starting an elk-farm was a novelty even in America; but the owner is satisfied with the results, and gives his experiences at some length. The original stock were caught wild in the woods of the Rockies. The first were taken four years ago, when the owner determined to tame the elk and breed them just as other people breed cattle. He began business with a small herd of six, which soon became "as tame as much-cows." They were "too tame," and had to be "petted like children." Though the farm was so large, they seemed at once aware that the conditions of their life were changed, and became domesti- cated, reserving any temper or wildness they had, not for human beings, but for each other. This occurred in the ratting season, and caused the main difficulties of the "farmer." When two years old the stags began to fight ; several were killed; and the more pugnacious had ta be isolated, and their horns sawn off. They also seemed less careful of their antlers in captivity, and injured them when growing. As this decreased their value, their owner had "boxlike wooden frames, light and easily carried by the deer," fitted over the growing horns, which acted in two ways. The horns were encouraged to grow regularly, and the deer with the box-frame on his head was less inclined to risk being entangled in the thick woods. At present one hundred and fifty tons of hay are made yearly, and five hundred bushels of grain set aside to supple- ment the natural feed in the park. In winter all the artificial food is chopped up and sweetened to the taste of the deer. "From the first," writes the owner, "everything has seemed to favour my project. The numbers have in- creased rapidly, and are augmented from time to time from the neighbouring forests as my men are able to procure the finer animals. It is always easy to catch young calves in the timber belt and add them to my herd." The pecuniary returns of this elk-farm are not stated, but there are two obvious sources of revenue. One is .to sell the wapiti for restocking such parts of the Rocky Mountains as have been denuded of game, the other to breed specimens for zoological collections. The wapiti have been almost exterminated in many districts. But sporting clubs and syndicates are every year buying up, or taking on long lease, great ranges of lake and forest out West, and the wapiti will soon be reinstated for sporting purposes. For stocking parks the wapiti is too large and too dangerous in the ratting season. Some intro- duced a Powerscourt drove every one out of the park at this time. But as an animal of the chase the wapiti is incom- parably the finest deer in the world. Nothing but the extinct Irish elk has ever carried such a "head." The antlers look like branches of an oak, and the animal which carries them stands 14% hands at the shoulder, and weighs as much as 1,000 lbs. 'Unlike most deer the wapiti grows fat as well as heavy, and the venison is of good quality. No park, or as we should call it, forest, in the Rocky Mountains will be complete without wild wapiti, and it seems certain that before long much of the Colorado and Montana mountains will pay to let off as deer-forests, of a kind and calibre far finer than those of the Scotch Highlands. For zoological collections, public and private, there is always a steady demand for wapiti. They make a great show, and fetch a high price, £22 and £25 each for young stags and hinds respectively. One owner of a park into which it was proposed to put some, recently stated that the price was too high to make it worth while to try the experiment.
Wild animals of all kinds are now so dear that "wild-beast farms" of many kinds promise a profitable future. Mr. Gambier Bolton recently pointed out in the Field that with good management they would produce large returns. It was essential, he considered, to secure an area on the light or sandy soils, preferably near the sea, on the South Coast. There with tigers fetching as much as £200 for good specimens, giraffes (if they could be obtained) £500, and many other animals not difficult to keep and rear command- ing fancy prices, there should be plenty of scope for a new era in live stock breeding. The idea is not a new one, though the rapidly increasing desire among owners and the public to. increase or to acquire scarce indigenous animals or foreign breeds for their estates or collections is of recent growth. The Zoological Society for some years owned a wild-beast farm at Kingston Hill, which was very successful. It was- acquired in 1831, and partly stocked by animals kept on, the Windsor Home farm by the King. Among these were fourteen wapiti-deer, three axis-deer, two sa,mbur, and four zebras, a wild boar, and a number of kangaroos. It was hoped to get a useful cross between the zebra and the donkey, and to rear a stock of hybrids for experiments, as well as to keep, up the numbers in the gardens in Regent's Park. We hear of six lambs from a cross between Wallachian rams and Dorset ewes reared in the second year, that ostriches were in perfect health and great beauty of plumage, and laid eggs, and that there was no difficulty in rearing the young creatures of many species born there. In 1832 the Society resolved to concentrate their energies in Regent's Park, and the stock at the wild-beast farm was sold in a three days' auction, and fetched high prices. On several South African farms a similar experiment to that in Colorado has been tried with Burchell's zebra. The zebras become as tame as ponies, and are readily broken in for draught work. The object of their tamers has been to breed a mule which, like the zebra, is proof against the tsetse-fly. The zebras themselves run well enough in a mule- team, though theycannot stand over-driving. The object here is to domesticate a wild animal ; but there are many cases of existing "wild-beast farms" in which this is only a secondary object or an object not desired. The most successful are those for rearing wild birds rather than beasts. Ostrich-farming, in which produce, not service, was the aim of breeding the birds, has now extended even to South Russia, where, according to recent Consular reports, it is a commercial success. Pheasant-rearing and the production of pheasants' eggs is now an immense industry in this country. As the eggs fetch on an average £4 per hundred there is ample scope for increasing the business, which should be profitable if eggs fetched 4d. apiece instead of 84d.; for the hen-birds can be sold for stocking at the covers as soon as the laying season is over. Both mink and beaver farms have proved failures,— not an unlikely result where the animal's skin was required for profit, and the creatures reared were slow breeders. But if any one would breed roe-deer for sale in numbers a demand would certainly arise in this country to etock woods and wood- lands, just as the demand for pheasants still outstrips the supply.
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