China has in recent months banned the sale of wild animals for food, citing the risk of diseases spreading to humans, but the trade remains legal for other purposes - including research and traditional medicine.
The deadly coronavirus - first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan - is widely believed to have passed from bats to people before spreading worldwide.
Two central provinces have outlined details of a buyout programme to help farmers switch to alternative livelihoods.
Hunan on Friday set out a compensation scheme to persuade breeders to rear other livestock or produce tea and herbal medicines.
Authorities will evaluate farms and inventories and offer a one-off payment of 120 yuan ($16) per kilogram of rat snake, king ratsnake and cobra, while a kilogram of bamboo rat will fetch 75 yuan.
A civet cat - the animal believed to have carried Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) to humans in another coronavirus outbreak nearly two decades ago - would fetch 600 yuan.