# Tiger Farming, Reasonable? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 9, 2009, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871 "2009-05-09T20:05:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/41 "2009-05-11T12:36:26Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Tigers are already farmed in some parts of the world, notably Taiwan. They apparently manage just fine. And no, Tigers are not native to that island. The so called “tiger ranches” in China and Taiwan hardly qualify as viable ranches in the context we are discussing, nor do they contribute anything positive to the world or to wild tiger populations. They are just trying to capitalize on the various markets in the world - much as Taiwan is famous for trying to horn in on virtually any possible business idea with a mass produced knock off. But they are hardly ‘managing just fine’ - the tigers are sick, not surprisingly they can’t feed them adequately, and they receive no medical care or really any care at all. And they are not exported to the major players in tiger part distribution and medicine black markets (who would scoff at the idea of importing captive-bred tiger parts from Taiwan), they are sold as cheap tourist trinkets in the form of things like “tiger bone wine” and tiger tooth necklaces and jewelry, etc. They are trying to add additional demand for tiger parts by reaching out to demographics that don’t normally partake in the practice but might drop a few dollars on a cheap trinket as a curiosity. Incidentally tigers once were native to mainland China, where they have had the same sort of “tiger ranches” you cite in Taiwan for many years, and today the wild tiger population in China is technically extinct. ---
**Author:** ![CutterJohn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/91b2a8/32.png) [@CutterJohn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CutterJohn)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/42 "2009-05-11T12:46:42Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > About 1 to 3 cubs every 3 years and normally 1 or 2 don’t make it. In captivity those numbers can be improved. But each tiger needs about 20 to 40 lbs. of meat per day for life. That’s up to 14,000 lbs. of meat per year per tiger. There is a reason they spread out and live solitary lives; they need a LOT of food. House cats do fine with a large portion of vegetable matter in their diets from dry cat foods.. I realize that house cat != tiger, but it seems to me that they could probably use substitutes for a largish portion of that meat. Especially since they would be farm animals with the short life expectancy associated with that, so there is no need to consider their long term health. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/43 "2009-05-12T21:46:49Z")
“They” refers to the tigers _at the farms_. As in, they are apparently raisable as livestock, even if not for eating. I make and made no claim that it helped the species in any way, merely that tigers could be farmed, were in fact farmed, and that this was not self-limiting on practical grounds. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/44 "2009-05-12T22:04:17Z")
I am not sure about tigers, but I regularly heard the argument that total ivory bans weren’t good for elephant populations. Elephants in Africa can be a pain in the ass for villagers - trampling crops etc. If there is no legal way to profit from them (and the villagers didn’t get a share of the money from eco-tourism), then villagers had no interest in preventing the poachers from killing the elephants, and in fact could be seen as benefiting from the poachers’ actions, as fewer elephants meant fewer crops destroyed. Legalizing the ivory trade in controlled circumstances, it was argued, would give the villagers a stake in keeping elephants alive thereby ensuring an ongoing source of ivory. I don’t know how much truth there was to this, but I have a vague memory that Zimbabwe (before it went totally tits up) allowed limited ivory trading, and also had a growing elephant population. I could be totally wrong here, though. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/45 "2009-05-14T18:40:37Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Just to satisfy my curiosity, does anyone know which parts of a poached tiger are used? And if tiger ranches were established and operated legally, which parts would find a market? I think it’s the lower horn. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/46 "2009-05-15T01:04:09Z")
I started a tiger farm once but all my tigers died. I don’t know if I planted them too deep or too close together. [rimshot] ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/47 "2009-05-15T01:08:20Z")
Regulation can help this. Legal Tiger farms will then help to catch poachers because it stifles competition, thus protecting wild tigers from illegal poachers. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/48 "2009-05-15T01:12:02Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > Bones, hair, eyes, brain, internal organs, teeth, claws… the penis is used in a soup that is claimed to be an aphrodisiac. Why is there even a market for that any more? Viagra has actually been proven to work in clinical trials – can’t they get it in China? ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/49 "2009-05-15T03:34:31Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Why is there even a market for that any more? Viagra has actually been proven to work in clinical trials – can’t they get it in China? It’s no fun to let medical science get in the way of a good superstition. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/50 "2009-05-15T06:22:23Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > They should just put a bounty on tiger poachers. Then they would all kill each other, and the tigers would be safe. I heard a rumor that eating tiger poacher testicle stew makes your penis size double. ---
**Author:** ![Furious\_Marmot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dfb087/32.png) [@Furious\_Marmot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Furious_Marmot)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/51 "2009-05-15T13:53:06Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Regulation can help this. Legal Tiger farms will then help to catch poachers because it stifles competition, thus protecting wild tigers from illegal poachers. Considering that a proposed tiger ranch may be located in a country with no wild tigers, and therefore no local poaching, how would they help? Voluntary direct contribution to anti-poaching squads in other countries? Is there any precendent for a legally-operated company helping the authorities catch people who sell an identical, non-counterfeit, non-stolen, but illegal version of the same product? Liquor producers don’t help the BATF bust moonshiners. Legal opium poppy growers don’t help destroy farms in Afghanistan. The closest situation might be the recording industry’s actions against music/movie piracy. But those are (from the industry’s perspective) counterfeit or stolen copies of their own intellectual property. NB: I am not trying to start a debate about the merits of file sharing, the DMCA, etc. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/52 "2009-05-15T16:11:07Z")
> [@Furious\_Marmot](#): > > Considering that a proposed tiger ranch may be located in a country with no wild tigers, and therefore no local poaching, how would they help? \ Well, replace “catch” with “stifle” and the whole economic argument works. Cheap farmed alternative to expensive wild caught/poached has been successful in protecting through economic forces, for example, wild parrots poached for the pet trade, wild alligators poached for food and leather, and others. However, tigers have low fecundity, slow growth, and a high food-dollar requirement. I suspect that farmed tiger would right now cost about as much as, or even more than, poached wild tiger. (My wild ass guess only.) This may though change as wild tigers become even less numerous, thus making poaching more difficult and driving the already high price ever higher. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/53 "2009-05-15T16:25:56Z")
> [@Mach Tuck](#): > > I’m having a tough time figuring out how you can herd tigers and still remain among the living. Hmmmm… Herding cats. Isn’t that an expression for something that is very difficult, bordering on impossible? ---
**Author:** ![Furious\_Marmot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dfb087/32.png) [@Furious\_Marmot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Furious_Marmot)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/54 "2009-05-15T16:55:04Z")
> [@CannyDan](#): > > Well, replace “catch” with “stifle” and the whole economic argument works. Cheap farmed alternative to expensive wild caught/poached has been successful in protecting through economic forces, for example, wild parrots poached for the pet trade, wild alligators poached for food and leather, and others. > > However, tigers have low fecundity, slow growth, and a high food-dollar requirement. I suspect that farmed tiger would right now cost about as much as, or even more than, poached wild tiger. (My wild ass guess only.) This may though change as wild tigers become even less numerous, thus making poaching more difficult and driving the already high price ever higher. You’ll get no argument from me on any of that, with the proviso that, as another poster stated, it is likely that the ‘marketing’ would change such that wild tiger became ‘the real thing’ and farmed tiger viewed as a cheap substitute. Which would do little, if anything to reduce poaching. Nevertheless, I was not arguing for or against the use of market forces. I merely pointed out that the other poster’s wording “Legal tiger farms will then help to catch poachers, because it stifles competition…” if taken as written, suggests, some kind of action taken against poachers by farmers, with the intention of removing poachers as competition, not an indirect, market-based stifiling. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/55 "2009-05-15T16:58:06Z")
> [@CannyDan](#): > > I suspect that farmed tiger would right now cost about as much as, or even more than, poached wild tiger. (My wild ass guess only.) I thought this thread was about wild tigers, not wild asses ::::rimshot:::: ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/56 "2009-05-15T17:23:57Z")
\*\*Ludovic \*\*- ouch! **Furious\_Marmot** - I understood and agree with your second paragraph. Farmers, tiger or otherwise, would hardly be involved in law enforcement, especially since their farms need be nowhere close to wild tiger populations. Your first paragraph allows some additional nuance. Most tiger parts go to Oriental “medicine” (or at least Oriental consumption). I’m not sure there is much marketing, beyond the name of the product - ‘TIGER’. No brands, no branding. And no need. Demand exceeds supply, and any ‘TIGER’ available is quickly snapped up. This being the case, it might not advantage ‘TIGER’ dealers to disparage their competition’s product, especially if they could get some of that product too. Initially at least, an increased supply would likely result in an increased income for all ‘TIGER’ purveyors, regardless of the source or sources of that supply. Once the purveyors adjust to the volume, and the farmers increase production, the farmers would (in theory) be in a position to decrease prices in order to eliminate wild competition. How far that reduction would be possible, and how far poachers might be able or willing to follow it, remain undetermined. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/57 "2009-05-15T18:07:20Z")
More to my wild ass guess: Average female tiger, perhaps 250 to 300 pounds, requires approximately 6 or 7 pounds of quality carnivore feed daily. (Males can be considerably larger, and require correspondingly more food.) There are “complete” prepared zoo diets, but these are at the high price end of the scale. Probably much cheaper would be some combination of waste from a poultry hatchery, or trimings from a slaughterhouse, plus other meat by-products such as nutria from control programs or carcasses from fur producers. Likely some vitamin and mineral supplementation would be required. Let us speculate that some nutritionally acceptable combination of these could be obtained for one dollar a pound. The food alone cost of maintaining this tigress would then be $6/day x 365 = $2190 per year. This tigress may produce a pair of cubs a year. (Actually total production is likely to be far less, due to the vagaries of breeding and possible mortality of cubs. But let’s go with 2 anyway as a best case scenario.) “Full size” (sexual maturity) is reached at age 3 - 4 for females and 4 - 5 for males. Since some of the priciest bits are sexual parts, I’ll assume that we want to harvest our product after sexual maturity. Expecting half males and half females in the babies, let’s average it to 4 years. So the food cost of a slaughter-age tiger would be 1/2 of mom’s diet for a year (assuming mom is kept only as breeding stock, and produces 2 cubs) plus 4 years of its own food, or 4.5 x $2190 = $9855, which I think we could round to $10 k. Divide this by 250 pounds (assuming the entire carcass is salable) and we get an average food-only cost to harvest of $40 a pound. Hhhmmmm… My WAG may have been off by a good bit. We do still need to factor in all the other overhead expenses involved in running a tiger farm including cost of capital, land, facilites, labor, utilities, vet care, etc. I assume that certain bits of tiger would command much higher prices than others. Tiger testicle, for instance, would probably sell for a good deal more than, say, tiger ham. I have no way of guessing what a poached tiger carcass would bring, when averaged-out pound for pound. What do you get for a single tiger spleen? A tiger penis? If you got several grand, and you could still sell the rest of the bits for something, then this scheme might not be so outrageous after all. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/58 "2009-05-15T18:19:35Z")
> [@Furious\_Marmot](#): > > Considering that a proposed tiger ranch may be located in a country with no wild tigers, and therefore no local poaching, how would they help? Voluntary direct contribution to anti-poaching squads in other countries? Is there any precendent for a legally-operated company helping the authorities catch people who sell an identical, non-counterfeit, non-stolen, but illegal version of the same product? Where do you think these tiger farms would be? Aren’t most places where people use Tiger parts in East Asia where the Tigers are? > [@](#): > > Liquor producers don’t help the BATF bust moonshiners. Legal opium poppy growers don’t help destroy farms in Afghanistan. Heh actually there is an opium shortage worldwide so legal morphine producers shouldn’t be destroying farms in Afghanistan, they should be contracting with them. And Moonshiners decreased dramatically after liquor was legalized so your argument works in my favor not yours. Corporations these days do a lot for PR and good will though. > [@](#): > > The closest situation might be the recording industry’s actions against music/movie piracy. But those are (from the industry’s perspective) counterfeit or stolen copies of their own intellectual property. NB: I am not trying to start a debate about the merits of file sharing, the DMCA, etc. Yea, I don’t think this is a good analogy. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/59 "2009-05-15T18:24:31Z")
> [@CannyDan](#): > > \*\*Ludovic \*\*- ouch! > > **Furious\_Marmot** - I understood and agree with your second paragraph. Farmers, tiger or otherwise, would hardly be involved in law enforcement, especially since their farms need be nowhere close to wild tiger populations. > > Your first paragraph allows some additional nuance. Most tiger parts go to Oriental “medicine” (or at least Oriental consumption). I’m not sure there is much marketing, beyond the name of the product - ‘TIGER’. No brands, no branding. And no need. Demand exceeds supply, and any ‘TIGER’ available is quickly snapped up. > > This being the case, it might not advantage ‘TIGER’ dealers to disparage their competition’s product, especially if they could get some of that product too. Initially at least, an increased supply would likely result in an increased income for all ‘TIGER’ purveyors, regardless of the source or sources of that supply. > > Once the purveyors adjust to the volume, and the farmers increase production, the farmers would (in theory) be in a position to decrease prices in order to eliminate wild competition. How far that reduction would be possible, and how far poachers might be able or willing to follow it, remain undetermined. Well it could be in their interests to fund game reserves to stifle competition, for the very reasons you’ve outlined above. ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871/60 "2009-05-15T18:45:55Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > I’m not a big fan of John Stossel, but this time on 20/20 he was talking about saving endangered species. He claimed that farming American Bison saved them from extinction, and that the same should be done for tigers. I’d just like to say that I fully support John Stossel _personally_ attempting to farm tigers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tiger-farming-reasonable/495871.md?page=4)