How many farmed rhinos would be needed?

[madd0ct0r]

to supply global demand by impotent men?

[Esquire]

In 2014, 1215 rhinos were poached. Surely not all of these were due to demand for the horn, but as poaching is illegal this figure is also almost certainly far below actual demand. Let us suppose that anti-poaching efforts have prevented half of the total rhino poaching that would have occurred without them, as a ballpark estimate. That leaves us 2430 rhinos killed yearly without anti-poaching efforts.

A rhino horn weighs between 1 and 3 kilograms. At about 2 grams the dose, that's, on average, 4,000 doses per horn, or around 9.72 million doses per year. Assuming a man takes one dose per day, that would supply 26,630 people.

[Esquire]

... And I just realized I answered the exact opposite question. I don't have any idea how many people want rhino horn, but that same 1215 figure from 2015 is supplying around 4.865 million doses, or 13,315 people. Less any horn used for other purposes, such as curios or Yemeni adulthood knives.

[Simon_Jester]

Rhinos would be hard to farm.

[Guardsman Bass]

It would be time-consuming and require a lot of land, to be sure. Male rhinos need at least 10 years before they reach sexual maturity, about five times as long as a cow (although alligators take a similar amount of time, and we farm those).

It's a possibility, although in the mean-time I think we'd be better off trying to save a breeding population that's had its horns removed. Or see if there are any hornless variants, like with elephants (in a prior wave of poaching, tuskless elephants shot up in number in east African parks).

[Jaepheth]

If I remember correctly there's also the problem that the sympathetic magic bullshit calls for wild animal parts because they're more potent than their captive raised counterparts.

[Purple]

If I remember correctly there's also the problem that the sympathetic magic bullshit calls for wild animal parts because they're more potent than their captive raised counterparts.

Sure, but farmed will always be cheaper and more conveniently accessible than poached or even legitimately hunted (if that was a thing). If you were given the choice between trying to find someone to sell you an illegally acquired poached wild rhino horn pill that has 100% capability for say 1000 euro or having 5 pills made out of farmed rhinos with 20% capability each for a total of 100 euro across the counter which would you be more likely to go for?

[madd0ct0r]

John Hume has raised about 750 rhino so far (saw on the news last night). He explicitly wants legal trade to undercut poaching and make it unprofitable. Even if there is demand for 'wild' rhino, the vast majority traded would be the safely farmed stuff with a bit of relabelling. The big money would flow to the tour organizers where you track and dehorn a rhino yourself to be assured of the 'purity'

http://africageographic.com/blog/legali ... -of-greed/ 750 rhinos here.

http://annamiticus.com/2013/10/20/china ... g-details/ Accusations china is trying to set up its own rhino farms....

[Me2005]

Rhinos would be hard to farm.

Isn't the bigger problem that they'd be farmed just for, what, like 5% of their body mass? At least with cows, bison, and aligators, we use the whole thing.

Then again, searching for that I learned that rhino horn is more valuable than gold, so a 55kg horn is worth about 2 million dollars. As long as they can graze, you'd come out ahead raising nearly any animal for 10 years if that's the payout. Another random google shows elephants costing up to $100,000/year, and that's probably without grazing, so you'd easily come out with $100,000/year payout raising rhinos.

Shoot, I may need to take up rhino farming...

[biostem]

Heck, if you started farming them, I'm sure you could turn the hide and meat into profitable side-markets as well. Maybe bring back some form of scrimshaw using the bones...

[madd0ct0r]

Im pretty sure the price would crash when the supply ceases to be so constrained. How do you predict what it would end up at? Cost of farming plus 50%?

[slebetman]

Rhinos would be hard to farm.

Isn't the bigger problem that they'd be farmed just for, what, like 5% of their body mass? At least with cows, bison, and aligators, we use the whole thing.

The rhino has an advantage here. The profitable part, the horn, can be harvested without killing the animal. The horn will regrow in time and can be re-harvested.

The economics then shifts to how long a rhino takes to regrow the horn and how much it costs to maintain a rhino during that period of time vs the price of the harvested horn.

[madd0ct0r]

three years to regrow, and mothers can bear more calfs during that period.

[Elheru Aran]

Heck, if you started farming them, I'm sure you could turn the hide and meat into profitable side-markets as well. Maybe bring back some form of scrimshaw using the bones...

The downside of this--

Leather and meat are already well established markets, and you would have to develop both commercially effective methods of tanning the leather and a way to ensure that the meat is approved for public, human consumption.

That said, the leather could have certain uses; the trick is finding out what. It's a bit of a niche item, frankly, as it would be unusually tough and thick from what I understand (depends on species to a degree but uniformly rhinos are understood to be rather thick-skinned, and that's literal). The meat is apparently edible enough that I can find references to it online-- not many, but it's out there. So the trick is making sure that you can farm a fairly consistent product that's reasonably parasite or disease free.

Bone scrimshaw... eh. The bones would be better used processed as fertilizer or dried and sold as tourist products in various forms, but you can already do that with bovine remains for far cheaper.

In general-- remember the discussion that we had some time ago about time-travelling to pre-Columbian America? At one point in that discussion there was mention made of domestication. It's a lengthy process, and unless you want to have free-range animals wandering the who knows where to fend for themselves, you're going to have to confine them to some extent, and that's a feat with megafauna. So... you're welcome to try. Good luck.

[Purple]

The bones will be sold as horn. Seriously. Once you grind both down who is going to say what white powder came from which part of the body?

[jwl]

Going by the information posted in this thread, we can find at number to the question asked in the OP. According to Google, the lifespan of a rhino is about 40 years. Taking off 10 years to mature, this means they can produce 10 horns in that 40-year lifespan, meaning you need 9720 rhinos to sustain 2430 horns per year.

[Bedlam]

The bones will be sold as horn. Seriously. Once you grind both down who is going to say what white powder came from which part of the body?

Well I don't know for certain but they could be chemically very different. At least some horns are made of a modified version of hair which is different from bone.

[Purple]

The bones will be sold as horn. Seriously. Once you grind both down who is going to say what white powder came from which part of the body?

Well I don't know for certain but they could be chemically very different. At least some horns are made of a modified version of hair which is different from bone.

How many primitive folk medicine believing savages have a laboratory in their basement to check?

[jwl]

If it's chemically different, it will probably smell and taste different, too. Also, if you've going to do that, why bother with rhinos in the first place? Sell them ground-up cow bones.

[Purple]

If it's chemically different, it will probably smell and taste different, too. Also, if you've going to do that, why bother with rhinos in the first place? Sell them ground-up cow bones.

For the same reason why processed food, with all the additives that go in it to make it smell and taste like real food still contains some actual product. Legitimacy. I honestly foresee the rhino trade going the way of processed food in this. Grind the whole thing down, flavor it, add smell enhancers, add sugar to make it addictive and ship.