Potential moneymaking scheme for wannabee crofting tycoons

[tcm]

Right, the idea involves getting some live trout, some mink (the actual animals) and some rabbits. The rabbits live in cages above the trout pond, and holes in the hutch floors let their poo thru so there something for the trout to eat. The rabbits eat grass and dandelions. The mink eat trout and/or rabbits. The mink, trout and rabbits all multiply in the usual way, of course.

Thus for minimal outlay, one can carefully manage the available sales products which are of course fresh trout, rabbits for the pet shop, rabbit meat, and mink fur. There's also a chance of charging for trout fishing, and a rabbit-petting zoo, and maybe even charging eco-warriors will also pay to visit an eco-gruesome enterprise.

One nice aspect of the model is that, if you had a glut of any one animal, the mink will eat them. If you have too many mink of course, you skinnem. Not sure if mink eat mink meat but they seem pretty vicious beggars to me. Also bit of experiments needed to see if the rabbits will eat heather.

Otherwise this is failsafe way of making money whilst sitting in the pub most of the day, bar a bit of weeding to get the dandelions/heather for the rabbits and a bit of feeding live cuddly animals to mink which wd be a bit gruesome at least the first week or so but you'd get used to it i reckon. Well, maybe: i remember my mate Phil and i went camping in the lake district on pushbikes in our teens with an ultra-lightweight 6lbs of equipment each and a budget of 11 quid for four days. Part of the plan to save money involved a small roll of fine plastic mesh from a garden centre which we would lay out on the shore of the lake at Bowness, sprinkle with a bit of bread to entice the duck to trot along, get tangles in the mesh and then we'd whackem with a bicycle pump, and hey presto, free duck for dinner. But we wimped out when we saw that we'd probably get lynched by all the tourists if we bludgeoned a duck to death, so we had to resort to having bread and jam using a tyre lever as a knife (which saved the weight of caryring cutlery, see). Actually, on that same trip, with no tent or sleeping bags I seem to remember sleeping under a rowing boat on the shores of derwentwater one night, which was ok altho you have to remember not to bash your head too much when you wake in the total darkness, still under the damn boat. After 4 days dossing around in the lake district we were so tired we got a train part of the way back home but didn't have the money to pay so we rode off the train in outlaw cowboy style and whizzed out of the station. And that's the last of the Jack Daniels gone...

[Julian]

Presumably, the money making part of the scheme involves the purchase of a lottery ticket with year one profits?

Can you give us your projections for the first three years of trading??

[aquaplane]

You missed an opportunity for income there.

The mink farm near here used to grow maggots for fishing bait to get rid of the meat waste from the skinned animals.

Of course animal rights doo gooder prats keep coming along to let the mink out so that the local wildlife gets eaten.

[Gordonmc]

Your cunning plan has a major flaw.
The mink will wipe out the entire stock of bunnies and fushes for the hell of it. I reckon it will take them about half an hour.
A polish friend of mine had a similar plan. He would buy a pig farm but instead of slaughtering the oinkers he would surgically remove sections of their skin and make crackling for sale. The skin would grow back in a few weeks...
Just because he enjoyed a bit of crackling on the roast he ignored the fact there is no market for the stuff on its own, scratchings aside.

[Superstrath]

The mink, trout and rabbits all multiply in the usual way, of course

Aye, well, maybe not as easy as you might think. A friend of mine tried a spot of rabbit-farming a few years ago. He invested in cages and a load of livestock, then discovered that he had a gay, or at least impotent, buck. No multiplying occured at all.
Needless to say, this escapde is still the subject of much ragging even decades later.

[ParaHandy]

The rabbits eat grass and dandelions. The mink eat trout and/or rabbits. The mink, trout and rabbits all multiply in the usual way, of course....

If there's some handy burdock abt, its a weedy plant anyway so can't be difficult to grow eh?, and you fed the rabbits with that as well, then, shift the rabbit hutch and collect the dandelion and burdock poo. package it as homeopathic medicine? If yer a bit squeamish abt this (i doubt that) then you can get some farting bunnies, collect the gas, and bottle it with the d&b

ps you need a website ... need to find one run by some geezer who's into this eco-claptrap?

[tcm]

Your cunning plan has a major flaw.
The mink will wipe out the entire stock of bunnies and fushes for the hell of it. I reckon it will take them about half an hour.

Er, the mink are in sepret cages though? Not mixed in with the rabbits. I thought that would be obvious?

[jim.r]

Your cunning plan has a major flaw.
The mink will wipe out the entire stock of bunnies and fushes for the hell of it. I reckon it will take them about half an hour.

Er, the mink are in sepret cages though? Not mixed in with the rabbits. I thought that would be obvious?

That's the mistake yer making, put them in together, film the carnage and flog to the BBC ..

[Gordonmc]

There isn't a cage designed yet that'll hold mink for any length of time. That's why the rivers here are infested with escapees from mink farms.
Jim.r has the right idea.