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Mink & Trout. Last year Curtiss farms, stocked with 900 dairy cows, 9,000 hens (output: 2.5 million eggs annually), 8,000 turkeys, 200 beef cattle and 6,000 purebred hogs, rang up some $1,750,000 in sales. Schnering went into the risky business of raising broilers and, after experimenting with the chicks' diet, cut the growing time from twelve weeks to eleven weeks. He grossed $785,000 on 550,000 broilers.
When he found that the slaughter of the chickens left feet, heads and entrails, Schnering brought in mink which thrive on chicken waste; he now has 400 breeding mink on his farm. One day Schnering decided to put the gushing springs on his farm to work. He built a ¼-mile-long trout hatchery, last year sold 60,000 trout to hotels and restaurants for an average $1 a lb.
Curtiss farms, like the candy factory, are spick & span. The glass brick and tile barn for prize calves is air-conditioned, has electrically-charged screens to kill flies. There are calving and isolation wards. Explains Schnering: "Calf mortality on the average farm runs 25% to 40%. That's plain bad business. Our average is just about zero." Signs in the cow barns read: "Every cow on this farm is a lady and should be treated as such."