The mink ranching industry is a natural outgrowth of trapping mink and selling the pets. To supply the increasing demand for garments, mink ranching has steadily expanded until at present it has grown into an industry with an annual gross product of approximately 100 million dollars. By breeding and raising mink under controlled conditions, ranchers are able to produce a higher quality pelt in a variety of mutant colors. However, by nature the mink is not adapted to living in a small cage in close proximity to hundreds or thousands of other mink and this has made it susceptible to many disease conditions. Also, the intensive inbreeding programs carried on by ranchers to develop the mutant color strains has brought some undesirable characteristics from a disease standpoint.