Zakaat On Animals on A Game Farm

Question

I bought some game such as Elands and Gemsbok.

Question 1: Is there zakaat on this? If yes, then…

Question 2: The farm is very huge. It is virtually impossible to say precisely how many animals we have after several years of breeding. When the numbers increase, the animals tend to form other groups. Therefore, they don’t all walk in a single herd. If you do find a herd, they don’t stand still. They move on and before you realise, they disappear behind the bushes or into the valleys between mountains. Therefore, how do we do the arithmetic?

Question 3: Only the fully grown ones are hunted. Not the young ones and the babies. So if there is a mixture of adults and young ones and babies, is zakaat to be given on all? Or on the young ones and the babies, too?

Question 4: If yes, then how do we determine the prices of the young one and the babies?

Darul Ifta, Darul Uloom Azaadville · Accepted Answer

1. Zakaat will be due if you bought the animals with the intention of resale.

2. You will have to try your best to do a head-count by driving around the farm, in order to determine the amount of animals there are on the farm. But, as you say, it is virtually impossible to ascertain the exact amount, in which case you will be required to take the opinion of an expert in the field who may be able to tell you approximately how much their numbers would increase on average, due to breeding. Whatever figure the experts give, you can then as a precaution inflate the number of animals somewhat until you feel confident that an x-amount of animals would cover all the existing herds. Zakaat should then be calculated on that figure.

3. Yes, there will be also Zakaat on the young ones and babies if their mothers were bought with the intention of resale.

4. Experts in the field can be consulted, who would give you the market-value of the babies and young ones as well. Zakaat can then be calculated based on the figures that the experts give to you.

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