The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-11-25
NeUKind Stock Farm
Is Established Within
CityLinaits of Topeka
Seven Hundred White Mice With Red Eyes and Long
Tails Are Housed at 1929 Kansas Avenue-They Are
Shipped Serum Laboratories and in the East

A stock farm-conducted along
modern lines and by the most ap-
proved methods. with between 600 and
700 head of stock, stabbed, bedded,
fed and wateEed a la mode-sonnds
spacious and Vast and expansive.
But there is such a, farm within the
city limits of Topeka, and what IS
more, it is housed within the limits
OF a frame building not more than
fourteen feet square.
This Lii 0utian rancho" is the
property of r. z. Barber, 1929 Kansas
avenue, and the stock on the ranch
are mice-white mice with red eyes
and long tails, and cunning ways.
Around the walls and on the floor of
the mouse house" which Barber has
built they are ranged in wooden boxes
faced with wire netting, hundreds
upon hundreds of them, tho the casual
visitor would never dream that there
were as many there as there really
are.
Business Pays Good Dividends.
1t is not only in the size of the
stock and the metes and bounds of
the ranch that the Barber livestock
farm differs from the acreage of the
cattle barons and the Shorthorns or
Herefords which dot a thousand
hills" BARRIERS livestock business pays
good dividends-he usually makes a
profit of about 200 per cent on every
head of stock of which he disposes and
his market is never shot" There is
always demand for every mouse which
he can find in his mousery, to ship.
They go to a fate quite as sad and
yet quite as useful as do the beeves
and the sheep from the ranches of
the west-to benefit humanity.
They are shipped in hundreds to the
serum laboratories and factories OF
the east, where their little bodies are
used in the manufacture of protective
serum against several sorts of ills that
assaii the human race-notab.y-''f flu.
Used to Make Flu Serum.
During the war, when the flu cpl
dernic was on, the doctors couldn't
get enough white mice to make the
serum with, at any price. No one was
raising them, and they tell me that
saved during that epidemic if there
had heen plenty of white mice and
plenty OF serum" Barber says. at
that time they sold for as high as 40
cents apiece"
THE house where the mousery Is O.
Gated Is worthy Of note. 1t is mouse
proof, and rat proof. both from the
inside locking out and the outside
plebeian, common mice getting in and
nlaverick.ng around among his pet
stock, any more than he wants any of
his mice to get out.
And a rat. If he%got in here, would
lust ci6an me out" he says. So the
foundatlCp and the floor, and the
walls for a goodly distance up are of
cement, and every tiny crack and
crevicc Is proof against either ingress
or egress, with the high window
screened with wire.
To Increase Capacity to 10000
When Farber has 10000 mice ON his
farm that is his goal-he will have
larger house and it will be a ntrle
more modern. He means to take up
the culture of guinea pigs for labofa-
tory purposes, along with mice, when
that time comes.
Five thntt ard mice aud five nun
dred guinea pigs would give a man a
comfortab income. and just alb put
keep him lISy," Barber explains.
He started a little lore tl@n
year ago. with thirty mice. He lost
half of the original thirty, and at least
a thousand of their progeny before he
learned how to manage them. He has
shipped about Z. 900 of them to labora-
tories. and has some 500 or 200 left
all of them the descendants of the
original thirty mice. He got the idea
from man he met in California. who
was making money out of mice
When I first started to work with
them here" Barber said, "all the
folks said that I was crazy. playing
around with a bunch of white mice.
Now, when I am getting orders fol
more than can sell, at $40 per hum