Free-range chicken farming leads to a road to prosperity
Yang Bo feeding the chickens
"A good life can't be waited for, can't be relied on, and certainly can't be begged for. Now that the country's poverty alleviation policies are good, and with our own hard-working hands, our family can lift itself out of poverty in a year." Recently, in Group 6 of Huamiao Village, Zhengsheng Township, Santai County, farmer Yang Bo told reporters with a chuckle that his family's life is getting richer day by day thanks to raising free-range chickens and other poultry.
Yang Bo originally had a happy family. More than ten years ago, his father Yang Changrong lost his ability to work due to myelodysplastic syndrome, and the entire burden of the family fell on his mother Li Qinghua alone. To ease the family burden, in 2002, when Yang Bo was 19, he went out to work. Over the following decade or so, Yang Bo settled down and built a career in Yunnan, running a restaurant with his wife, and the family got by well enough. In 2015, a fire burned down Yang Bo's restaurant, leaving him more than 100,000 yuan in debt. Afterwards, his wife divorced him. With both his career and marriage at rock bottom, Yang Bo had no choice but to bring his daughter back to his hometown. That same year, the Yang family was registered as a poor household with an established file and card under the "plan to each household, responsibility to each person" precise identification program.
After returning home, Yang Bo refused to accept poverty and was determined to get rich. "I'm still young, not stupid or foolish, and I have a vocational secondary school education. There should be a way to give my family a good life." Yang Bo rallied his spirits, and after repeated discussions with his parents, decided to take advantage of their family's sloping land to raise free-range chickens.
Through financial poverty alleviation policies, and with the support of the village Party branch and village committee as well as the "first secretary," Yang Changrong's family took out a 50,000 yuan loan from the Zhengsheng Township credit union, then contracted about 5 mu of abandoned farmland behind their house, and put up a simple free-range chicken coop capable of raising more than 1,000 chickens. Considering their lack of experience in the early stages, Yang Bo bought his first batch of 1,000 chicks weighing about one jin each, and constantly searched online to learn related farming techniques and find sales channels, afraid that one wrong step would bring yet more misfortune to the family.
Four months later, the more than 1,000 free-range chickens Yang Bo had carefully raised were ready for market. He sold 500 in the first batch, and another 430 half a month later, netting nearly 30,000 yuan. "We raised them carefully, with regular disinfection and disease prevention, afraid that anything might go wrong." After earning his first pot of gold, Yang Bo was overjoyed, but he did not stop there. Instead, he thought about how to expand the scale and add more types of poultry to get rich sooner. Afterwards, Yang Bo took the 30,000 yuan he had earned, built a new standardized brick-and-concrete chicken house, bought another 1,000 chicks weighing seven or eight liang each, rented about 200 mu of woodland from some villagers in the group, bought 800 geese, and started raising breeding geese and meat geese under the trees. Then he bought 40 breeding rabbits.
At present, the second batch of chicks has all survived, 500 chickens are about to be ready for market, and another 500 already weigh three or four jin. The first batch of 500 geese has been purchased and is now being carefully raised. All 40 breeding rabbits have survived, and there is already more than 3,000 yuan in net income. Yang Bo told reporters: "Based on how this batch of geese is doing, we plan to select some as breeding geese and raise some as meat geese. If nothing unexpected happens, that should also bring in a considerable income. Once our farming skills improve and our cash flow opens up, we also plan to raise a batch of meat sheep freely on the mountain."
Yang Bo is full of confidence about the road ahead: "With policy support, our whole family will definitely be living a good life in two years."