Mink Pinks as feeders?

[desertanimal]

Rosie, what are the mink fed?

 

[RosieReal]

Rosie, what are the mink fed?

Mainly fish, actually. They use things like grains (wheat mostly) as fillers, but its 90% the 'rest of the fish' after the fillets are cut and packaged for people. The fish plant then sends the rest of the fish carcass to a vat where its broken into smaller pieces and frozen into ice cube like chunks. Thats how they feed it to the mink, in the chunks. I don't know about as far back as what the fish are fed, but the fish were raised to be human food. I was most worried about things like antibiotics and steroids, but they're pretty careful about those at the farm. Both of thoes things affect fur quality, so they avoid them like the plague.

No regurg from Yoshi after his minky meal. I wasn't really expecting one, but its nice to see that not only will he eat it, but it stays down too.

 

[carnivorouszoo]

The only problem I can see is if anyone ever got a larger live one and wanted to feed say a boa as in the wild many of this family of animals eat snakes or at least kill them in the wild. Ever heard of riki tiki tavi?

 

[RosieReal]

The only problem I can see is if anyone ever got a larger live one and wanted to feed say a boa as in the wild many of this family of animals eat snakes or at least kill them in the wild. Ever heard of riki tiki tavi?

Well...live larger mink are very hard to come by... As in: not available at all. If I wanted even week old mink I have to take dead, the only time I can take live is if they're born that day. The farmers are VERY protective of their stock. Each mink is potentially 200$ as a pelt, and they as a rule do not allow people to keep them for pets.
As I said in an earlier post, mink as pets can be done, but its not reccomended. I personally have the option of getting an older one...but thats an EXTREME exception to the rule that I do not plan to take advantage of.
Simply obtaining a live older mink would be hard if you dont work at a farm, and if you tried to wrangle an animal like that you'd never even get it near the snake before you lost fingers.

I dont think they'd be acceptable feeders much after the newborn stage and personally wouldnt try. I'd like to see what the three day old kits look like, but I spoke with the farmer today and he was saying that they dont change much before they open their eyes, and after that they start to bite.

 

[Nanci]

I just thought of something weird. If you buy a tube-feeding kit for cornsnakes, the diet that comes with it is mink food! I believe it's dry, but when I was a teenager I volunteered at (lived at!!) the zoo and we had mink food that was these huge blocks (like sack of dog food-sized) of ground pinkish meat. I don't know what was in it...Lots of animals ate it.

 

[El Jefe]

Here's the whole chart. I would say the mink fall along the lines of a quail chick or an anole or frog, in terms of protein. I wonder if Jeff Mohr would know more about nutritional requirements.

http://www.rodentpro.com/qpage_articles_03.asp

I do not know about the nutritional requirements. What I would guess, however, is that mink are not a staple prey item for any snakes. Being in the weasel family, they are mostly carnivorous and any snake crawling into a hole/den of a mink would most surely become food instead of the other way around.

 

[wade]

When I was a kid I had a neighbor who owned a mink farm. They fed the mink a glop that looked like ground meat and I believe it was beef byproducts and horse meat. I'm going to research that a little. Where I live there would be no fish byproducts available.


I have found in the last 10 minutes that the mink farming industry is very defensive about how well they treat their animals and what a good services the provide for man kind. They seem to get more than their share of criticism from ecoterorists.

What I have read is they feed mainly fish byproducts if the farm is on the coastal regions and meat and poultry byproducts if they are inland. The carcasses are used for pet food. It didn’t say but I would bet that means dog and cat food. The only approved method of euthanasia is carbon dioxide gas.

 

[wade]

One other think I found that I thought was interesting. Mink produce the best fur if they are raised in colder climates. The US produces about 6% of the worlds mink and Canada produces about 5%. The big mink producers are China and Denmark.

 

[kathylove]

...Mink produce the best fur if they are raised in colder climates...

I was thinking about that, too. Maybe herpers up in the Frozen North should check into frozen mink pinks if there is a ranch within driving distance. Maybe the ranchers would welcome a new market for them. It would not amount to a ton of money, but if you could offer them half of what you pay for mouse pinks, and take all they produce, it would help defray some costs for them and recycle a waste product, while providing herpers with a cheaper alternative food.

 

[desertanimal]

I was only asking about the food because there was a question about what happens to the mink carcasses after skinning and I was thinking that, historically, perhaps they were fed back to the next generation of mink.

 

[wade]

The article I read didn't say that they were fed back to themselves but it said the carcasses were made into pet food and sold to zoos. I would not be surprised if some of it goes back into mink food.

I think the number two byproduct, after the pelt, was mink oil, which is used in the tanning of leather and cosmetics.

 

[RosieReal]

Its interesting to see Denmark mentioned. There is apparently a farmer who is famous in the industry for having totally climate controlled barns, so that he can stimulate breeding whenever he wants and can control the quality of pelts. We are indeed a coastal region... the feed is picked up at a fish plant in the fishing community that my father grew up in...which we live about 45min away from. I didn't know they were fed beef elsewhere, although I've not spent much time learning about the fur industry until it was responsible for half my income, and even then it took possible snake food for me to start asking many questions. My boyfriend is enjoying the interest in his job.
I dont doubt that in some places mink are fed a combination of things, but at this particular farm (which by industry standards is fairly small) the feed comes directly from the fish plant into a truck which is driven by a worker (usually my boyfriend) to the farm. I'm not saying theres absolutly nothing strange in the feed, but probably not other mink...although the mink wouldnt care either way.