Ganzhou District, Zhangye, Gansu: Free-range chickens "peck" open the door to prosperity
Near Chaoyuan Village and the Desert Park in Daman Town, Ganzhou District, there is a chicken farmer whose chickens are not kept in cages but raised outdoors. He is Zhou Jianfei, a farmer from the No. 6 Production Team of Chaoyuan Village and a member of the Wild Chicken King Farmers' Professional Cooperative. Through several years of free-range chicken farming, he has summed up a method for raising free-range native chickens, drawing on the advantages of wasteland and the beautiful pastoral scenery and resources of the farm to develop a one-stop service of ecological sightseeing, farming, and dining. He has made their free-range chicken business bigger and stronger, so that more people can eat free-range native chickens.
What Zhou Jianfei had in mind at the time was that people today are better off, more particular about what they eat, and fond of green, environmentally friendly ecological foods, so he set his sights on free-range native chickens that are both economical and tasty. Once the farming goal was set, this man who loves to mull things over began to put his mind to farming methods. In spring, summer, and autumn, he lets the chickens forage for themselves in farmland and wasteland on alfalfa, grass seeds, tender grass, and locusts; at four or five in the afternoon he calls them back and feeds them a meal of concentrated feed such as corn, wheat, and beans. The chickens breathe fresh air, bask in the sunshine, and drink tap water. They can loosen the soil and provide fertilizer for the fields, while also ensuring that the chickens' diet is rich and harmless, and saving on feeding costs. At the same time, the chickens have a large range of activity, so they are more disease-resistant and suffer fewer illnesses than confined chickens, and the grass and insects in the woodland provide the chickens with rich nutrition, while the chicken manure also helps the trees grow. In particular, the meat and eggs of free-range chickens contain no additives, no hormones, and no drug residues, meeting the requirements of the green and healthy consumption that people pursue today.
Through these years of farming, relying on a good ecological environment and reasonable feeding methods, Zhou Jianfei's chicken farm has gradually shown its benefits. Last year he raised more than 1,300 chickens, with an annual net income of more than 200,000 yuan. Flocks of these native chickens have "pecked" open the door to prosperity, and the ecological farm has also become Zhou Jianfei's window to wealth.
Over these years, because the quality of the free-range native chickens is good, his farming scale has grown year by year, and more and more distributors come to him to inspect and place orders after hearing of his reputation. Just as the reporter was interviewing him, the owner of our district's newly opened Daokou Roast Chicken shop also came to place an order. "I make Daokou roast chicken. We make Daokou roast chicken, and we have very high requirements for chickens, especially ecological chickens. A while ago we used Old Zhou's chickens, and customers responded very well, so today I've come again to sign a contract with him, and in the future we plan to use his ecological chickens for the long term." Wang Guodong, owner of the Daokou Roast Chicken shop, told the reporter.