Rex rabbit farming helps a couple return home to start a business and find prosperity
On May 23, Zhang Xiaolu was checking on the growth of the rex rabbits.
"Don't fight, don't fight, there's enough for everyone..." On May 23, at the Keyue Rabbit Farming Cooperative in Huanghaowan Village, Santai Town, Jimsar County, the post-90s couple Zhang Xiaolu and Cao Wei were busy feeding the rex rabbits.
Talking about the reason the couple started their business, 27-year-old Zhang Xiaolu said: "We spent many years struggling outside, and our parents are getting older. It felt really hard. Investing outside is not as good as developing a farming business at home, where we can also take care of our parents."
"Heaven rewards the diligent, and every bit of hard work brings its own harvest." Rather than a family motto the couple intends to pass down, this is their personal experience of striving to start a business.
After graduating from Changji Vocational and Technical College in July 2007, Zhang Xiaolu worked in Urumqi, Karamay, Korla and other places. In 2016, after many years of struggling away from home, he began to think about returning to his hometown to start a business. After investigating and learning from many sources, he took a liking to the good prospects and market potential of rex rabbit farming, so he brought his wife and 3-year-old daughter back to his hometown to start raising rex rabbits.
His wife Cao Wei said: "At first, our parents were very much against it, but when they saw how confident Zhang Xiaolu was, they gradually came around to supporting us."
To ease the concerns of both sets of parents, Zhang Xiaolu took them to visit the cooperative of Luo Fei, a major rex rabbit farmer in a neighboring township (Qingyanghu Township), so they could see the good prospects and market potential of rex rabbit farming.
After that, Zhang Xiaolu went to Urumqi and other nearby breeding bases to investigate and learn. After returning, he scraped together 45,000 yuan and bought 150 young rex rabbits from the Hengxin Rabbit Farming Base in Zaozhuang, Shandong, officially beginning his entrepreneurial career.
Through trial breeding and self-study, Zhang Xiaolu gradually mastered techniques such as feed formulation, disease prevention and control, and kit breeding for rex rabbits. His farming scale grew larger and larger, and he built a new 750 sq m rabbit shed. In March this year, he also established a farming cooperative.
At present, Zhang Xiaolu's cooperative has 5 members in total, with 500 breeding rabbits in stock, producing 30,000 commercial rabbits a year, with net profits reaching about 800,000 yuan.
At the same time, Zhang Xiaolu also independently developed a pelleted formula nutritional feed, and actively encouraged surrounding villagers and relatives to develop rabbit farming.
"Now people advocate ecology, green, environmental protection and health. I have always used crops such as alfalfa grown on my own land to make my own forage, and insisted on feeding less feed. Even if it makes the rex rabbits' growth cycle a bit longer, I still want to guarantee the quality of the rex rabbits," Zhang Xiaolu said.
It is understood that in recent years, Jimsar County has introduced a series of subsidy measures to strengthen agriculture and benefit farmers, continuously increased support for young people returning home to start businesses, guided returning young people to take root at the grassroots level, and led farmers and herdsmen to increase income and become prosperous.
Like Zhang Xiaolu, Meng Xianjiang from the same village, who had many years of experience working away from home, is also one of the cooperative's members. After visiting many times to observe and gaining an in-depth understanding of the benefits of rex rabbit farming, he joined as soon as the cooperative was established this year.
Meng Xianjiang said: "Rex rabbit farming earns more in a year than working outside. The policies are so good now, and I hope we work hard to run the cooperative even better."
At present, the rex rabbits raised by Zhang Xiaolu are in short supply on the local market, which has also given him more ideas for the cooperative's next stage of development. He hopes to lead more villagers onto the road of increasing income and becoming prosperous.
Zhang Xiaolu said: "The government policies are good now, and there are subsidies for our farming, with fairly strong support. We plan to develop deep processing of rabbit meat in the second half of the year, encourage the whole village to raise rabbits, develop the rabbit industry, make rex rabbit farming a distinctive industry of Jimsar County, make our cooperative bigger and stronger, and lead more people to prosperity."
Advice
**Guo Yanqin, PhD in Management, School of Economics, University of Finance and Economics:
First, against the background of many young people flooding into cities and severe rural hollowing-out, the couple Zhang Xiaolu and Cao Wei resolutely chose to return to their hometown and realize their dreams step by step, helping rural areas escape poverty. This spirit of not coveting vanity, not being restless, and not forgetting one's roots deserves our praise and strong support. Second, although farming meat rabbits still has great development prospects and a relatively high possibility of prosperity, all farming carries a certain level of risk. Therefore, in addition to introducing excellent rabbit breeds when bringing in breeding stock, Zhang Xiaolu and Cao Wei especially need to master scientific and reasonable feed formulas and correct epidemic prevention measures to minimize the risks of rabbit farming.
Finally, it is suggested that Zhang Xiaolu and Cao Wei can adopt a "cooperative + scientific research + base + farming households" production model to expand the scale of rex rabbit farming, and later can adopt a "farming + processing + tourism" business model to develop leisure tourism projects and further increase the added output value of rex rabbits.