Traveling a Thousand Miles to Buy Turkeys and Start a Farm, Opening Up a Path to Prosperity

In recent years, rural farmers have been trying every possible way to seek out distinctive ways to boost their profits, and the chickens being raised are so varied that this reporter has seen no small number of them, and has more or less grown accustomed to it all. Yet on July 15, in Group 11 of Baisheng Village, Zhongquan Town, Ziliujing District, Zigong City, the chickens raised by proprietor Liao Shujun made this reporter's eyes light up.

On their bright red necks grow large fleshy wattles, and the color of the neck changes from red to bluish-green depending on whether the bird is “in a good mood or a bad one”, and the males will even fan their tails like peacocks. What is even more peculiar is that as soon as people give a shout, they will all rise up in chorus, one after another. This kind of chicken is the delicacy that must be eaten on Thanksgiving in the United States — the turkey. Nowadays, after many ups and downs, Liao Shujun has turned the turkey into a “stepping stone” for creating wealth.

Traveling a Thousand Miles to Buy Turkeys, 20,000 Yuan in Travel Costs

Liao Shujun was originally a laid-off female worker. In February 2012, she and a business partner happened to see a wealth-building television program that told the story of a company in Jiangsu Province that had gotten rich raising turkeys. After some discussion and an online search, she and her partner decided to try raising turkeys, which have good meat quality, low fat, low cholesterol and high protein.

“I first called that boss twice, but no one answered. Later, I sent him a text message, explaining that we wanted to try raising them in Sichuan and asking whether Sichuan's climate could support turkey farming and what the survival rate would be. In the early hours of the third day, the boss finally replied by text, saying that they could be raised in Sichuan and welcoming us to come and take a look.” Liao Shujun said.

In late April 2012, Liao Shujun and her partner drove a thousand miles to Xuyi, Jiangsu, and spent 1,600 yuan to buy 1 group of breeding turkeys (1 male and 4 females) to bring back to Sichuan for a trial. Liao Shujun put the turkeys into woven bags with small holes cut in them and placed them in the car's trunk. On the return trip she discovered the chickens were suffocating, so she sprinkled water on them to cool them down and then put them back into the woven bags. Unexpectedly, this became a joke, “The chickens got wet, and then were smothered in the bags, and the water did not dry in time, so the chickens caught colds. After we got back to Zigong, they all died.”

Liao Shujun refused to give up. She and her partner immediately booked plane tickets, flew directly to Nanjing and then transferred to Xuyi, and bought another group of breeding turkeys to fly back to Sichuan. “The turkeys alone cost more than 900 yuan in plane tickets. Altogether, we bought 10 turkeys, and the travel costs alone came to about 20,000 yuan.”

Frequent Embarrassing Mishaps, Finally Getting Past the Hatching Hurdle

After “May Day” in 2012, Liao Shujun placed this group of turkeys at her older male cousin's home in Fuquan Town, Yantan District, Zigong City, for a trial. Her initial idea was to breed and raise them herself and develop in a snowballing fashion.

But during the incubation process, she ran into another embarrassing mishap. “I waited a month and a half, and only after collecting more than 50 eggs did I take them to Fushun to find someone to incubate them.” Liao Shujun said somewhat sheepishly, “In the end, only 18 eggs could still be incubated; the rest had expired. The technician said that fertilized eggs must be brought for incubation within 10 to 15 days.”

To incubate 1 chicken in Fushun, you only pay 1 yuan in incubation fees if it survives, but the cost of driving back and forth was not small, and it was exhausting. So Liao Shujun then spent 200 yuan to buy two “broody hens” (old hens that hatch chicks) to incubate the eggs. At first, the “broody hens” could handle it, but as the turkeys' egg production gradually increased, the “broody hens” were also powerless to help.

Liao Shujun then spent more than 1,400 yuan to buy a small fully automatic incubator, but unexpectedly ran into a new problem: after two trial batches of 13 turkey eggs, and after anxiously waiting 25 days, only 1 chick hatched. She was so worried that she called the manufacturer for advice before she found the reason. “It turned out that I had not mastered the incubation temperature and humidity. The temperature must be controlled at 37.8 degrees, and the humidity controlled at 65%, and every one or two days the incubator door also had to be opened to let in air and lower the temperature. But at the beginning, I did not understand any of these techniques.”

After finding the root of the problem, Liao Shujun quickly raised the hatching survival rate of turkey eggs to 80% to 85%, just one step away from the normal survival rate of 90%.

By the end of May last year, the turkeys had grown from the initial 5 to more than 130, and Liao Shujun had built a base covering more than 20 mu in Group 11 of Baisheng Village, Zhongquan Town, Ziliujing District, and added 1 large fully automatic incubator.

Ready for Market in 4 and a Half Months, Profits Are Quite Considerable

At the base, Liao Shujun fenced off a patch of mountain forest to raise the turkeys ecologically, feeding them corn, millet, rice bran, discarded vegetable leaves, rapeseed stalks, and ryegrass she grows herself. The turkeys get “free time” every day, and workers drive them out to roam freely for one or two hours, improving their running ability and enhancing the meat quality. At night, the turkeys go back into the chicken house and sleep on a comfortable fermentation bed.

“From hatching and surviving to being ready for market takes only 4 and a half months.” Liao Shujun said, “Last year, we held a turkey tasting event in Zigong. A professional chef commented: the meat is full, has a chewy texture, and after eating there is a kind of fragrance at the base of the tongue.”

Liao Shujun said that she currently prices the turkeys at 40 yuan/kg, with each turkey weighing 7.5 to 15 kg at market age, for an average selling price of 400 yuan per bird. After deducting costs of about 260 yuan for breeding eggs, incubation, labor, vaccines, and feed, the profit is more than 100 yuan. She said that starting around this year's Spring Festival, friends began coming one after another to buy them.

1 hen can lay 13—15 eggs per month during her two-year laying period. Aside from most being used for hatching, starting this month she has also begun supplying farmers' markets and small supermarkets, where 1 jin contains seven or eight eggs and sells for 20 yuan. Although fewer than 100 eggs have been sold so far, at least she now has a new channel.

“I also visited several hotels in Zigong to promote the turkeys, and they are willing to buy them too. But turkey is a high-end food, and the market is affected by the current overall climate.” Liao Shujun said that on the one hand, she plans to appropriately lower prices to boost sales; on the other hand, her number of turkeys is currently only about 2,000, so the volume is not yet large enough and has not reached the point of oversupply. Her main direction at present is still to expand the scale — she plans to build another 200 mu base, and at the same time distribute chicks to farming households, driving local farmers to raise them, with guaranteed buyback after they are ready for market.