How do you run a free-range chicken business? There are answers in the mountains of Ningqiang, Shaanxi

In the third month of spring, walking into Caochuanzi Village, Maobahe Town, Ningqiang County, and crossing the hillside, you can see Cheng Xiaoling's free-range chicken farm. Around the chicken coops and deep in the mountain forest, there are flocks of chickens running everywhere, and the sounds of crowing, flapping wings, and pecking for food are endless. The originally quiet mountain forest has also become lively.

Caochuanzi Village is located in the Daba Mountains south of the Qinling Mountains, at an altitude of 1200-1900 m, with excellent air quality year-round and lush vegetation, and has long been known as a "natural oxygen bar" and "earthly fairyland."

The good ecological resource advantages here deeply attracted Cheng Xiaoling. In 2012, in order to realize her entrepreneurial dream, despite the persuasion of relatives and friends, Cheng Xiaoling resolutely gave up the superior living conditions in the county town and returned to Caochuanzi Village to start raising free-range chickens.

Factory-style chicken farming has low costs, a short cycle, and quick results, so why think of returning to her hometown to raise free-range chickens? Faced with such puzzlement, Cheng Xiaoling answered without hesitation that factory-style chicken farming can indeed achieve profits quickly, but the quality of the meat is not as good as that of free-range chickens. From a long-term perspective, free-range chicken farming should still be developed, and this also conforms to people's desire to pursue green food and a quality life. Doing business should make money, and even more importantly, bring peace of mind and be worthy of the vast number of consumers.

Starting in 2012, she built two chicken coops beside her own garden land, selected authentic local free-range chicken breeds, adopted a woodland free-range model, and guaranteed a growth cycle of more than 10 months.

Thanks to Caochuanzi's good ecological breeding environment, combined with her strict demands on the quality of the free-range chickens she raised, after a year her free-range chickens were distinctive in both appearance and meat quality, and were deeply welcomed by consumers.

That year, she earned the first pot of gold in her entrepreneurial career, which gave her firmer confidence in her future entrepreneurial path. Her successful experience soon attracted the attention of the villagers, and led by her, 5 households in the village quickly followed her in developing free-range chicken farming.

In order to further expand the influence of her free-range chicken farming, in 2014 Cheng Xiaoling took the lead in establishing the Caochuanzi Ecological Free-Range Chicken Breeding Professional Cooperative. In order to raise higher-quality free-range chickens, Cheng Xiaoling always paid attention to every link and detail in the chickens' growth. She invested 20,000 yuan herself and bought 5 automatic temperature-controlled incubators, purchased local free-range chicken eggs from nearby farmers to hatch chicks, and apart from raising some herself, provided the rest at cost price to cooperative members and farmers for breeding.

In just 3 years, Cheng Xiaoling led more than 30 farmers in surrounding towns and villages to develop large-scale free-range chicken farming. The cooperative's free-range chicken farming scale grew from just over 1,000 at the beginning to an annual output of more than 6,000 commercial free-range chickens, with more than 10,000 chicks hatched and an output value of more than 800,000 yuan.

In recent years, as Ningqiang County has closely followed the "integration of culture and tourism" development strategy and vigorously developed rural tourism, the development of Caochuanzi's natural scenic tourism has also kept pace with the times and is in full swing, with an endless stream of tourists from all over the country coming for sightseeing and leisure. Cheng Xiaoling also realized that tourism had brought her new business opportunities, and proposed an experiential sales model for Caochuanzi ecological free-range chickens.

Cheng Xiaoling put up an advertising sign at the village entrance, set up a stove in front of her home, slaughtered chickens on the spot, cooked them over firewood, and paired them with local Chinese medicinal materials such as gastrodia, Chinese yam, and angelica. Whether it was clear-steamed chicken soup, spicy cold dressed chicken, stir-fried diced chicken, or braised chicken chunks, tourists praised it endlessly after tasting it, and all wanted to buy a few free-range chickens to take away before leaving.

In 2016, in order to further broaden sales channels and enhance the brand image, Cheng Xiaoling's cooperative reached a consensus with Hunan Huinong Technology Co., Ltd., and launched a new online sales model on Huinong.com.

After the cooperative slaughters and processes the free-range chickens, it vacuum-packs them and, according to customer needs, pairs them with local specialties such as gastrodia and shiitake mushrooms as ingredients, and delivers them to customers through SF Express. The products are sold to more than 10 provinces and cities including Beijing, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. At the same time, it opened a physical store in the county e-commerce industrial park, achieving simultaneous online and offline sales.

This year the cooperative plans to buy two more large automatic temperature-controlled incubators, expand chick production, and mobilize more surrounding poor households to join the free-range chicken farming industry. At the same time, Cheng Xiaoling also plans to open an agritainment business, extend the free-range chicken farming industry chain, further increase the income of farming households, provide good production, epidemic prevention, and sales services for poor households, and lend a hand to targeted poverty alleviation work.