Pheasant Farming Becomes a Good Way for Villagers to Increase Income and Get Rich

Shuicaoba Village in Sanheba Township, Kang County, Gansu Province, where Ma Xinghui lives, is one of the most remote villages in the township, with high mountains and dense forests, sparse population, and a single channel for people's income. Going out to work has always been the first choice for the young and strong laborers here. Ma Xinghui was one of them. But while others were still toiling in faraway places year after year earning money through physical labor, Ma Xinghui came back and set up a breeding farm at home. In just one year, he made people from seven villages along the river look at him with new eyes.

Due to family poverty, after graduating from junior high school, Ma Xinghui went with others to work in Anhui, Jiangxi and other places. While working at a construction site in a place in Anhui, he occasionally discovered that a local breeding farm raised a kind of pheasant that sold very well, and the natural environment of this place was similar to that of Kang County. He also learned that the feed for raising this kind of pheasant was wheat, corn and others, which Kang County also had. Ma Xinghui kept this in mind. Whenever he had free time, he would go to this chicken farm, chat with the owner, and learn the relevant techniques for raising pheasants. After basically mastering the essentials of raising pheasants, Ma Xinghui quit his job at the construction site and returned to Kang County to start planning his own pheasant farm with his family.

Ma Xinghui's family originally lived on a hillside five or six hundred meters from the road. Now the new house has been built by the road. The barren slope and abandoned land below the front of the old house amount to seven or eight mu, which is just suitable for free-range pheasant raising. After some preparation, in March 2016, Ma Xinghui registered and established the Xianghui Breeding Farmers' Professional Cooperative, absorbing 13 farming households into the cooperative. He invested 130,000 yuan to build a simple chicken house of 100 sq m. Because the climate and environment needed for pheasant growth are uniquely favorable, by the end of the year more than 1,000 pheasants were ready for market. Each pheasant chick cost 20 yuan to buy and was sold for 90 yuan, with a profit of more than 60 yuan per pheasant.