Porcupines hunted for breeding

People in HCM City have been hunting for porcupines to breed, developing porcupine farms after they successfully developed farming of tortoises and crocodiles.

After 10 years of development, the “porcupine breeder fever” in HCM City has become hotter than ever. Both regular citizens and small merchants are rushing to hunt for porcupines to breed, although some porcupine couples cost up to 13 million dong.

According to Tuoi Tre, when contacting porcupine farms to ask for breeding couples, callers are told that there are no more to sell or they have all been sold. Previously, only two month-old porcupines could be sold as breeders, but nowadays, merchants will even buy one month-old porcupines.

As the supply is short, porcupine prices have been escalating. In February 2010, a porcupine couple was sold at 11 million dong, a rate that has climbed to 13 million dong. Parent porcupine breeders are selling at 30-32 million dong per couple.

“You won’t be able to get porcupine breeders right now, even if you pay higher. Merchants from the north are cooling their heels for a whole month to collect porcupines. Meanwhile, many people who want to raise porcupines call continuously to ask for breeders,” revealed Do Cong Vinh, the owner of Cong Vinh farm in HCM City.

Farm owners explained that porcupines can make people rich rapidly. Vinh calculated that, if buying a couple of parent porcupines at 30 million dong, a buyer would be able to take back their capital after just one year of feeding and then obtain profits by the second year.

Every year, porcupine couples can produce four porcupines. With current prices, people would get 26 million dong from selling porcupines, but they do not have to spend much money on feeding them.

The most costly requirement is the breeding facility, while other expenses are low. Their main food source is vegetables, which can be bought at the market for low prices. Investors with big capital can raise tens to hundreds of porcupine couples and they can earn a billion dong a year from their sale.

Vinh noted that porcupine buyers now are not only southerners, but also northerners too, including farmers in Nghe An and Thanh Hoa.

According to husbandry experts, they once saw “price fevers” for other wild animals such as tortoises, wild boars and crocodiles. They observe that the prices of porcupines have been pushed up in the first period of this breeding movement.

Additionally, as the porcupine price is very high, no porcupines are provided to restaurants to be used as food.

Do Quang Tung, Deputy Director of CITES Vietnam (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) maintained that porcupine breeding can develop only when there is a market that consumes the meat. Right now, only the porcupine breeder market exists and porcupines are not being consumed by restaurants. Tung concluded that farmers are facing risk in raising porcupines. Once the supply becomes more profuse, the prices will decline.

Ky, the owner of a porcupine farm in Dong Nai province, remarked that only porcupines that cannot reproduce are sold to restaurants.

There is a big gap between the price of porcupines used as breeders and the price of porcupines used to make meals, one million dong per kilo versus 600,000-700,000 dong per kilo

According to CITES Vietnam, by the end of 2009, 250,000 porcupines were being bred. Porcupine breeding has become a popular job in HCM City, with 93 households engaged in breeding. The total number being raised in the city is 4900, mostly in districts in the suburbs, including Cu Chi, Binh Chanh and District 12

Tuoi tre

Tags: Porcupines