By Christopher Spillane and Kevin Crowley  | From Bloomberg

Jacques Malan weaves his Toyota Land Cruiser through thorn trees in South Africa’s dusty bushveld, stops and points at an asset he says could be worth $5 million. It’s a buffalo calf named Manyara.

“This little guy has all the potential to become one of the biggest in the country,” the 52-year-old game farmer said as he pointed at the calf’s milky white horns. “The genetics are superb,” Malan said dressed in khaki shorts and a shirt with his name embossed on it.

Manyara is the half-brother of Horizon, South Africa’s biggest-horned disease-free buffalo bull, who earned his name from his 55-inch wide horns. Malan sold Horizon for a then-record 26 million rand ($2.4 million) in 2012 and he’s betting that Manyara, named after a Tanzanian lake, is worth even more.

Record prices, which have risen fivefold in six years, are a product of South Africa’s booming game ranching business in which the country’s wealthiest, including Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and luxury-goods billionaire Johann Rupert, compete to breed the biggest and rarest animals to generate revenue from hunting. Some critics say the price surge is a bubble.

Two hundred years ago African buffaloes regularly had horns spanning more than 60 inches, almost the length of two baseball bats, Malan said. Hunting has now eliminated the largest animals from the gene pool with a horn spread of 40 inches today considered big.

Lion Circle

“We breed them to be able to breed back the top genetics,” Malan said in an interview at his farm called Lumarie, where he has bolstered his security by circling his house with a cage containing three lions. “We’re not here to create something that was never there before, we’re trying to replace.”

Read more at Bloomberg