I hope you posted that mink farm video to show why trapping is WAAAYY better than fur farming. Wire floor cages, slop-served food placed over the minks heads and no access to even a bowl of water for a semi-aquatic species to use? Like damn, I've seen far superior conditions at PUPPY MILLS! Trapping is so much better than crap-capitalist fur farming; more jobs, more money going to land management, truly natural conditions for the harvested animals to live in and far less lying from trappers.
I myself much prefer trapping over fur farming - but with the huge boom in the fur industry in recent years with Russia and China becoming major players in the market, fur farming makes the bulk of mink and fox furs now. Without fur farms meeting massive demands, wild populations would be hurting.Â
Back in the early years when the fur market was solely wild furs, wildlife paid a tremendous price. With the invention of raising stock for fur, it allowed many pelts to be produced and allowed us to harvest a responsible wild amount, allowing a balance and restoring wildlife. Now we can trap safely and keep wildlife safe and they can produce millions of mink/fox a year that doesn’t decimate wildlife. I love trapping, it’s my life passion, but I just wouldn’t stand by and allow wildlife to be taken on a mass scale and be devastated. This is why I do support fur farming, and I am glad that there has been a lot of change in their scene over time to make way for better progress in the husbandry of their animals. Just like trapping has evolved into a wonderful management tool, fur farming has also evolved over time as well.Â
I’d rather prefer those cages to be larger though, I understand where you’re coming from, and include water as you mentioned as mink are semi aquatic. The wire cages are for allowing waste to fall though - in the early days, animals were kept in pens on the ground (that were actually larger) and entire stocks died of parvo and froze to death and caught diseases from feces. I can’t deny though that fur farms have allowed a balance in the fur industry during huge market demands which kept wildlife from being decimated entirely.Â
If you want to avoid fur specifically from fur farms, go with wild furs such as :
Beaver, Wolverine, Weasel, Marten, Otter, Coyote, Wolf, Bobcat, Raccoon, Grey Fox, (wild) Red Fox, fisher etc…
If you want to tell Mink and Fox apart from wild and captive bred, ranch mink have been bred to have undercoats and guard hairs pretty close equal in size to each other. This is called short nap, the guard hairs have been bred to be shorter to match closer to the undercoat. They also come in a rainbow of colour mutations.Â
Above is a close up of what ranch mink pelts look like. They tend have guard hairs and undercoats closer together in size. Below is the fur type on a living ranch mink :
Now a wild mink has “spikier” fur,  having noticeably longer guard hairs. They also have a limited colour range and have more white under splotches (Ranch Mink have been bred to have little to no white splotches) Below is a picture of a wild mink. I’d take pictures of my own wild mink pelts but I just have a bad cellphone camera. So these pictures I have gotten from Google and fur related websites…
Foxes can be told apart too. Ranch fox pelts are MASSIVE compared to wild fox furs. I have seen ranch fox pelts that could match up to size to a coyote’s pelt, some even longer. They are also silkier, thicker coated, have thicker ruffs around the neck area and come in dozens of colours not found in the wild. Below is from Glacier Fur’s website, these ranch pelts are massive compared to the man holding them up.
Here, from the same website, are wild caught red foxes …
You also notice, the area behind the shoulders is shorter compared to the ranches’ pelts, who are pretty long haired all over. Ranch foxes and ranch mink, have been bred over time to be much larger than their wild counterparts. The only natural mutations that occur in wild foxes is silver and cross, but these also remain similar in size as the above picture.Â
Not many animals species are raised for fur. Mink and fox dominate the fur farm scene, but you can also find Finnraccoon, Chinchillas and Rex Rabbits. Very rarely will you ever find anything else being raised, and anything else is typically raised on a very small scale for private selling. Martin are also raised for fur in Russia, but this doesn’t occur here in the States - their breeding is very difficult to manage here. Fisher were once used back in the early 1900′s but failed to breed in captivity.Â
Hope that helps out if you ever come across a fur that isn’t labled - say at a thrift store or yard sale :) You’re totally entitled to your opinion on fur farming, I understand that.Â
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