The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-08-08
A WOMAN RAT FARMER.

| Mouse farming Is an unusual occu- patton. but Miss Abbie Lathrop, of Granby. Mo. makes a living at it. She hundreds of rats and guinea pigs. be- sides rabbits and ferrets.
 In 1908 Miss LAthrop sold over 5000 mice and rats. Not many of these, un- fortunately for them. were bought for pets. Nor, despite tradition, do China men buy them. The animals gave their | lives for the advancement or science. l They could not help 1t, to be sure. | Nearly all of them were used for ex- | periments in the study of tuberculosis and cancer. The animals are artificial | ly Infected and diseases studied by ob- servation. vivisection, postmortem ex- aminations. Mice are used in the great est numbers because they are the least | expensive. They sell for from from s1b to $25 per 100, while full-grown rats cost about 25 cents each. Miss Lathrop has sold many mice for pets or | exhibition purposes, and last winter sent away at one time nine pairs of mice. each pair of different solid col- | or. For some of the rare colors as | much as $2 per mouse is paid.
 Miss Lathrop's farm ia given over entirely to her animal business. and by | far the most or that is raising mice and | rats. Several buildings are filled as | full as possible with the cages, and Miss Lathrop gives all her time to | them. In addition, she employs help | for some of the work. The farm is located near Granby Five Corners. Barn. wagon shed and henhouse are now homes for rats and mice. The mouse business has some of the pre- seriousness of the stock market. It | is profitable when the demand Is good, but with a good demand prices go up and spectators go into the business the mouse market becomes overcrowd- ems now and then. so that sometimes the stock has to be kept for long | time, eating up profits.
 Rats and Mice Great Eaters.
 Eating Is a favorite pastime of rats and mice. and the amount they dispose | of is surlsising. Two or three tons of
 carrots alone are used on the farm in
 a season, and several hundreds dollars' | worth of rolled oats. The rats and | mice easily eat two barrels of crackers
 a week. and 200 guinea pigs will stow Il away a ton of stun month. There | are sometinfes as many as 5000 mice l on the farm at one time, 500 rats is
 not an unusual number and 800 guinea l pigs sometimes accumulate. Only | fifty or sixty rabbits are usually on
 hand.
 The mice are both the most interest | ing and the most numerous. There
 are about ten different eolors andNtwen- ty combinations of color. It Is very unusual for one mouse to have more
 than two colors. and when a mouse is
 not 6 solid color, white is pretty sure to be one of the colors of the com-
 bination. The colors in which mice
 are raised on Miss Lathrop's farm are
 surprising.> White Is ordinary and
 black is not startling. and one might expect chocolate colored mice. But
 when 1t comes to cream colored mice,
 or orange colored mice. or red mice,
 one is decidedly surprised. There are | even plum silver and silver mice. blue
 mice. red miceN and agouti mice. The red ones are much the color of the bay of a horse. The blue mouse is
 about the color of a maltese cat. The aRouti mice have dark brown hair with
 yellow tips. which gives golden brown effect. CSilver mice with ruby eyes are the rarest combination and bring a fancy price. Miss Lathrop is of the opinion that she is the only one in America to have raised mice with that comb ination, although some have been raised in England. Miss Lathrop has made special effort to develop
 some colors, although most of them have come from nature undirected. She | takes care to mate solid colored mice of the rarest colors and has seen re-
 cults. For about two years she has | been mating yellow mice together. At
 first but a few of the offspring of | these yellow parents were solid yellow, hut now the majority of the young that | have generations of yellow ancestors are themselves solid yellow. although
 many are not.
 She Likes Them.
 Miss Lathrop got into the mouse
 farming business in natural way.
 She Is one of the few women wno
 have an instinctive liking for these
 little creatures. She heard of some
 one who wanted to sell entire a stock
 of mice and she bought it. Soon after | she saw an advertisement for mice and
 she was soon selling quite number
 to A large dealer. Miss Lathrop sup posed that the mice were sold Tor pets.
 and was rather surprised at the mum ber which must be kept as pets. N)t
 until more than two years of mouse | farming did sha know that the mice were used for laboratory work She | didn't like the Idea of selling her mice and rats to be infected with tuberculo-
 sis. cancer and other diseases which the scientists study but she makes her | knows that the little animals are really | helninR toward the eventful victory of humanity over disease. The guinea ni0s are used for the manufacture of anti-toxin-in fact. the guinea pigs are | the manufactories of very important | antidotes for the poison which certain diseases create in the system.
 Rats Like To Be Petted.
 Rats enjoy being petted and act as if honored. Mice are much the same. The rabbits appear to care little. all | though they will allow one well and | favorably known to stroke their ears. The guinea pigs will squeak greetings to their mistress. but don't like to be handled. The ferrets like to be pettad and 1t makes no difference to them who pets them. The ferrets are sold to hunters. The rats and mice live about A wear and a half or two years. About one in A hundred of the old ones de- velops cancer of itself. Such one Is worth a fancy price to the scientists Other things being equal. the scientists are ant to prefer that a rat or mouse shall be pure white. or nearly so. This makes 1t possible to mark a distin- | puishinR number on the animals fur. | Four or five old mice, one of them a male. are kept together in one cage. l A litter of young mice Is usually i've. | although 1t is not uncommon, and there was once a litter of twelve at the farm. Rats often have filters as large aa thirteen. but eight is the common