Migrant worker returns home to raise rabbits, earning 200,000 yuan a year
From the initial 20 to more than 1,000 now in stock; from pet Rex rabbits kept mainly for fun to "wealth-bringing rabbits" that generate nearly 10,000 yuan a month, in just 6 short years, rabbits have not only brought Zhang Lei endless joy but also unexpected wealth.
Recently, while interviewing in Yuanzhai Township, Zhengyang County, this writer met Zhang Lei, a young man born in the 1980s, and learned about his rise to prosperity.
Zhang Lei is a grassroots militia member from Yuanzhai Village in Yuanzhai Township. After graduating from high school, he went to work in the south and eventually became a feeder at a large rabbit farm in Jiangsu. It was precisely that working life at the rabbit farm that became an important turning point in his life.
According to Zhang Lei, the work at the rabbit farm was not easy, but the furry Rex rabbits brought him joy. He devoted all his energy to the work, diligently studied rabbit-raising knowledge, and soon mastered scientific methods for raising Rex rabbits. Three years later, Zhang Lei returned to his hometown, used the money he had earned working to buy 20 breeding-quality Rex rabbits, set up 20 rabbit cages, and began raising them in his own courtyard. "These 20 little rabbits are my treasures. I watch over them all day long, afraid that something might happen to the 'baby rabbits.'"
But misfortune can strike at any time. In March 2009, a rabbit epidemic killed 50 of the more than 80 newborn "baby rabbits" at once. Zhang Lei felt terrible, could not eat, could not sleep, and lost a noticeable amount of weight within a few days. He used all the knowledge he had learned, but still could not cure the "baby rabbits'" illness. To figure out the cause, he took the dead "baby rabbits" to a professional livestock breeding training class. A necropsy revealed that the rabbits had been infected with viral hemorrhagic disease, and the main reason was that Zhang Lei had neglected to strengthen immunization.
Where you fall, there you get up. Zhang Lei learned the lesson from his first failure in raising rabbits. He gathered the 30 surviving young Rex rabbits, built 30 standardized rabbit sheds, hired relevant experts as "rabbit-raising consultants," regularly checked the "baby rabbits'" health, and promptly prevented various diseases. He focused on the feeding and management of breeding-quality female rabbits to ensure technical guidance for Rex rabbits before, during, and after kindling... Hard work pays off. After a period of busy effort, the 30 Rex rabbits Zhang Lei raised were ready for market, and he made a net profit of more than 1,000 yuan.
In 2013, through a 100,000-yuan loan to support migrant workers returning home to start businesses, Zhang Lei built 5 standardized rabbit sheds on his 3 mu of land, introduced 100 fine Rex rabbit breeding stock, and started large-scale breeding of improved Rex rabbits, maintaining about 1,000 commercial Rex rabbits in stock year-round for continuous cycle sales without gaps. Later, he invested another 3,000 yuan to buy feed-processing machinery and mixed pellet feed himself, greatly reducing production costs. To improve breeding efficiency, he also combined the professional knowledge he had learned, used the breeding farm as a trial base, devoted himself to research, and summarized the "three dos and three don'ts" method of feeding rabbits. Thanks to scientific feeding and careful care, the Rex rabbits he raised were large and heavy, produced many offspring, had dense fine fur, smooth coats, and attractive colors, and were highly favored by customers. Today, Zhang Lei sells 2,000 commercial rabbits a year, with annual income of more than 200,000 yuan, making him a well-known Rex rabbit breeding expert in the county.
"In breeding, going it alone does not work; only with scale can you have influence," Zhang Lei said. To expand the scale and lead everyone to prosperity together, in 2015 he founded the Zhengyang County Yuxin Rex Rabbit Improved Breeding Base, applied to register and established the Zhengyang County Yuxin Rex Rabbit Breeding Professional Cooperative, guided 156 neighboring militia households to set up Rex rabbit farms, and successfully used the "cooperative + base + farmers" business model to industrialize Rex rabbit breeding. Recently, Wu Juan, Party secretary of Yuanzhai Township in Zhengyang County, praised Zhang Lei's Yuxin Rex Rabbit Improved Breeding Base during an inspection: "Raise a thousand rabbits at home, and you'll have a golden treasury on the road to prosperity. Zhang Lei's return-home entrepreneurship has found a good path for his fellow villagers to escape poverty and become rich through industry."