Water Deer Interaction with Humans - Folk Remedies

In its native range of China and Korea, the water deer is hunted not only for its meat but also for body parts that may be used in traditional medicine, although South Korean naturalist Junha Kim tells me that the practice is relatively restricted in the country:

"And sometimes the bodies of water deer hunted or killed in traffic accidents are used as herbal medicines. Which are known to be consumed personally by hunters and middle-aged and elderly men who are not confident in health; it is not commercially distributed. Naturally, the efficacy of the medicine has not been verified, and it is prohibited to commercially trade processed products by capturing wild animals without permission in this way under Korean laws. Even if it's a harmful animal."

In their 1999 paper to Mammal Review, however, Changman Won and Kimberley Smith suggest that the hunting of deer for food and traditional medicine has historically led to significant population declines on the Korean peninsula.

Intriguingly, the word zhang carries a double meaning: it has long been used to denote "deer" -- and water deer specifically in China -- but according to Ruth Yun-Ju Chen's 2015 Oxford doctoral thesis on the formation of medical knowledge in Song China, it also translates as "miasma":

"Zhang in Song China typically referred to a range of disorders, or to a debilitating atmosphere, that were thought to be endemic in Lingnan 嶺 南 (literally, south of the Ling ranges), an area that is largely encompassed by the present-day Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, and were usually attributed to the heat (re 熱), dampness (shi 濕), and poison (du 毒) found in that environment."

Whether coincidence or not, the curative lore surrounding water deer in China runs deep. In a 2007 paper to the Chinese Journal of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Hua Shen and colleagues drew on the Liang Dynasty physician Tao Hongjing (456–536 AD), whose celebrated Bilu noted that water deer bones were thought to cure impotence and the marrow to revive vitality, while the skin yielded leather and the milk was said to enhance disease resistance, improve fitness, prolong life, and even restore beauty in the elderly. Much of this tradition is, I believe, codified in the Bencao Gangmu (本草綱目) -- the Compendium of Materia Medica, a landmark 1596 compendium of traditional Chinese medicine, natural history, and botany -- which further records that river deer bones can "delight the colour" (i.e., relieve fatigue) and dispel wind, while the sweet and mild tasting milk "warms and nourishes the five internal organs" and slows ageing.

That milk, however, is not simply what is drawn from a lactating doe. It refers specifically to zhangbao (獐宝, "deer treasure"), also known as naikuai (奶块, "milk lump") and occasionally described in the literature as bezoar – the semi-digested, cheese-like mass of colostrum that forms in the fawn's abomasum (glandular or true stomach) during the first few bouts of nursing, as enzymes cause the milk to coagulate into curds. This slows digestion and reduces the feeding frequency of the fawn. The colostrum's protein content is around 39%, the most sought-after component of which is immunoglobulin, making up just over 28% – some four times higher than in bovine colostrum. For at least four centuries it has been used in Chinese folk medicine to treat digestive complaints, malnutrition, and even tuberculosis in children.

The conservation cost of this demand has been considerable. Writing in Acta Theriologica Sinica in 1984, Helin Sheng and Houji Lu estimated that even in the late 1970s and early 1980s, between 150 and 200 fawns were killed annually for naikuai. By 2000, Endi Zhang reported in Deer that demand had grown further, driven in part by local newspapers overstating its properties. Of 102 sites surveyed across 20 islands in the Zhoushan archipelago, 71 (nearly 70%) showed evidence of significant poaching. In 1998 alone, two poachers were found to have taken 30 fawns in Zhoushan's Baiquan Town; another 30 were seized in Beichan the following year. A dedicated enforcement operation mounted by the Agriculture and Forestry Bureau of Dinghai District between 1997 and June 2000 resulted in 69 poachers caught, along with confiscated rifles, leg-traps, and eight hunting dogs – such dogs reportedly trained specifically to locate fawns, typically during June mornings. The operation also yielded 81 packets of naikuai and 59 live fawns.

I have seen claims on Chinese news websites that zhangbao can promote the intellectual development of children, enhance the body's immunity, and improve the physical resistance of the elderly, albeit without pointing to specific medical data. That said, there is some support for zhangbao's therapeutic claims in the Chinese clinical literature. A 2000 study in Pharmaceutical Practice by Duizhong Huang and colleagues found zhangbao effective in 56 (93%) of 60 infants treated for anorexia, with benefits to spleen and stomach function and overall child development. In their paper, the paediatricians report that in 44 (73%) cases the children were clinically cured (i.e., their appetite returned to normal and all clinical symptoms of anorexia disappeared), 12 cases showed improvement, and four cases were ineffective. Children up to five years old were generally more responsive to zhangbao treatment than older children, and the treatment proved effective even in extreme cases – such as restoring appetite and body condition to a four-year-old male who presented to the clinic with severe anorexia having refused food for three months. The researchers explain (translated from the original Chinese):

"The medicinal mechanism of Zhangbao relies on its unique biochemistry: its high crude protein matrix and balanced amino acids, which are suggested to stimulate gastric juices, elevate pepsin activity, and help optimize the small intestine's peristaltic movements to reverse digestive stagnation without inducing toxic side effects."

A 2007 paper in Zhejiang Preventative Medicine by Xiaoming Lou and colleagues attributed therapeutic effects to zhangbao's concentration of amino acids and trace elements, and cited clinical evidence for its role in promoting digestion and supporting adolescent growth. The following year, Xia Yong and co-workers reported in Modern Preventative Medicine that zhangbao significantly increased growth in weaned rats by stimulating gastric secretion and pepsin production; they also noted that healthcare companies in Zhejiang now sell a powdered form (described as "light yellow granules") with a recommended daily oral dose of four grams (0.14 oz.) for children. Most recently, a 2014 study by Yumei Mei and Liang Zheng, published in Chinese Medicine Modern Distance Education of China, found the substance effective in both treating and preventing precancerous stomach lesions in rats. That last finding warrants particular caution: fewer than 5% of therapeutics that show promise in animal trials ultimately obtain regulatory approval for use in humans.

Based on his Zhoushan study, Endi Zhang estimated the annual regional toll on wild fawns to be around 1,500 animals; though he told Arnold Cooke that he expected demand to decline, since belief in zhangbao's properties was largely confined to older generations. Regrettably, this does not appear to have been the case. We don't know precisely how many water deer are killed or harvested in China for naikuai today, nor whether its popularity has waned in some regions, but the species is now farmed quite widely for this purpose, and the trade can be highly lucrative even if is sometimes comes with conservation benefits.

A 24-minute newsreel on China Central Television (CCTV) in August 2014 covered the farming of water deer for zhangbao, featuring an interview with hunter-turned-farmer Guiquan Pu, who had been raising deer in the Wuxi region of Jiangsu for more than a decade. It reported zhangbao being harvested when the fawn is 20 to 25 days old, since fawns apparently reach their peak milk consumption around this age, allowing the curd to be harvested at its peak volume. Wild fawns, the newsreel suggested, produce around 50 grams (100 grams at most) owing to the irregular diet of the mother, but deer raised by Pu were exceptionally well-fed and produced far more milk. Pu could apparently extract up to 300 g at a time, and at 200 yuan (£22 / $30) per gram, after deducting costs, the economic return is quite substantial.

A similar picture was painted by Jue Wang and Shijun Yan in a 2018 article for China Ningbo Net, which described how zhangbao has been used in the Jiangnan and Taihu Lake region for centuries, and how the establishment of farming operations in Zhoushan has since spurred a broader industry. The procedure outlined involved waiting until a fawn is approximately 20 days old, at which point surgery is performed to extract the milk curd from its abomasum, yielding around 250 grams (9 oz.) of fresh zhangbao per procedure, which is then dried and ground to powder. According to the article, in 2018, 0.5 g capsules were retailing at five yuan apiece (approximately £0.54 / $0.73), although it is unclear whether this represents a depreciation in value since 2014, or the price in a different region or market.

More recently, a September 2021 article published anonymously on the China Hui Nong Network (CHNN) described the farming methods in some detail. Fawns destined for zhangbao extraction are typically separated from their mothers at eight to ten days old and fed goat's or cow's milk for three days, before being starved for 24 hours and then given water deer milk; after a further three to four hours, the zhangbao has formed and surgical extraction is carried out. Following extraction, the zhangbao is rinsed, cleaned of blood, and stored frozen. The finished product is a small, thin yellowish rectangle (not dissimilar to a slice of cheese), measuring approximately 4 cm in length, wrapped in the same thin bamboo sheath used to wrap zongzi (sticky rice dumplings). Across the several Chinese news sources examined for this account, retail prices for zhangbao were consistently reported at between seven and ten yuan per gram – a price point that, at the upper end, makes it more valuable by weight than silver.

Some confusion remains around how many times zhangbao can be harvested from a single fawn. CCTV mentioned it could only be extracted once, while the China Hui Nong Network article stated the procedure can be repeated roughly every ten days and is typically performed three times per fawn. The CHNN information aligns with that provided by Jun Gu and Guoya Gu in their paper on techniques for raising water deer, published in China Animal Husbandry in 2013.

Water deer are increasingly regarded as valuable livestock in China, with income derived not only from zhangbao but also from venison and the sale of adult animals as breeding stock. Indeed, the CCTV newsreel noted that even after the zhangbao had been harvested, Pu could still sell the water deer for at least 5,000 yuan (£550 / $735). The scale of commercial farming is suggested by a 2019 report in the Straits Herald, in which Tang Xiaoling, Lin Xiaoyue, and Zhang Xiongmin describe one such operation in Fujian Province (translated from the original Chinese):

"In early 2017, with approval from Fujian Province's forestry authorities, Zhangzhou Xinshunyuan Wildlife Domestication Co., Ltd. obtained a national key protected wildlife artificial breeding and domestication permit, embarking on a path of specialty animal farming. After several years of exploration, the company successfully achieved the domestication and breeding of river deer, and the farming operation has gradually expanded in scale. Currently, over 300 fawns are produced for sale each year, along with more than 100 jin (斤) of river deer milk and bezoars, yielding significant economic returns."

One hundred jin, a Chinese unit equivalent to 500 grams, amounts to approximately 50 kg (110 lbs.) of river deer milk and zhangbao combined, produced annually by this single operation.

Not everyone regards this trade favourably. The Chinese animal welfare campaign group Tòngréntáng (痛人堂) -- a name that plays on that of the well-known traditional medicine company Tóngréntáng (同仁堂), swapping in a character to mean "suffering" -- has campaigned against zhangbao farming, arguing that the practice amounts to cruelty inflicted on a young and defenceless animal. According to the organisation, zhangbao extraction historically required killing the fawn outright, cutting it open shortly after its first feed to remove the curd, a method that placed unsustainable pressure on wild populations. "Live extraction" techniques, in which the fawn survives the procedure and can be operated on again roughly every ten days, up to three or four times, were developed partly to address this conservation concern, but Tòngréntáng maintains that repeated surgery on fawns as young as 20 days old remains a welfare concern in its own right, regardless of whether the animal survives.

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References

Chen, R.Y-J. (2015). Zhang ("Miasma"), Heat, and Dampness: The Perception of the Environment and the Formation of Written Medical Knowledge in Song China (960-1279). Ph.D. Thesis for Oxford University.

Gu, J. & Gu, G. (2013). Techniques for raising river deer. China Animal Husbandry. (20): 82-83. [In Chinese]

Huang, D. et al. (2000). Clinical observation of treatment of 60 cases of infantile anorexia with zhangbao. Pharmaceutical Practice. (2): 68-69. [In Chinese]

Lou, X. et al. (2007). Observation of zhangbao extract on improving the growth and development of children. Zhejiang Preventative Medicine. 19(3): 46-47. [In Chinese]

Mei, Y. & Zhang, L. (2014). Experimental research for treatment for precancerous lesions of stomach cancer in rats with the milk solid of Chinese water deer fawns. Chinese Medicine Modern Distance Education of China. (23): 156-157. [In Chinese]

River Deer are very valuable, but they are difficult to raise. China Central Television (CCTV), Beijing. 21st August 2014. [In Chinese]

Shen, H. et al. (2007). A preliminary study on artificial breeding of river deer. Journal of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine. 26(6): 65-66.

Sheng, H. & Lu, H. (1984). A preliminary study on the river deer population of Zhoushan Island and adjacent islets. Acta Theriologica Sinica. 4: 161-166. [In Chinese]

Wang, J. & Yan, S. (2018). A look inside Ningbo's only river deer breeding base: "Deer Treasure" sells for 5,000 Yuan per Jin. China Ningbo Net. 15th August 2018. [In Chinese]

Won, C.M. & Smith, K.G. (1999). History and current status of mammals of the Korean Peninsula. Mammal Review. 29(1): 3-36.

Xiongmin, Z. (2019). Specialized farming: The "cowardly" river deer is a treasure trove of resources. Straits Herald. 10th January 2019. [In Chinese]

Yong, X. et al. (2007). Experimental study on the effect of zhangbao on promoting digestion. Chinese Journal of Preventative Medicine. 8(6): 738-740. [In Chinese]

Yong, X. et al. (2008). Experimental study on the effect of Chinese water deer gastric lumpy content on the growth and development in rats. Modern Preventative Medicine. 35(19): 3708-3710. [In Chinese]

Zhang, E. (2000). Poaching as a major threat to Chinese water deer in Zhoushan Archipelago, Zhejiang Province, PR China. Deer. 11(8): 413-414.