Poultry farmer Yue Zhanqiang seizes the opportunity to escape poverty and build a prosperous business

Eighteen years ago, Yue Zhanqiang, a native of the Niuxinshan Management Station of the Muling Forestry Bureau, rushed into the tide of migrant work like many young people born in the 1970s. During five years of working away from home, he took jobs as a construction laborer and a porter. Relying on his hard-working, hardship-enduring spirit and his willingness to take on challenges, he quickly lifted his family out of poverty and built up savings of several tens of thousands of yuan.

In early 1993, carrying his startup funds, he returned to his hometown and began thinking about finding a new way to make money. By chance, Yue Zhanqiang came across some information about getting rich by raising chickens. After doing market research, he found that egg prices on the market were relatively high at the time, while raising laying hens required little investment and brought quick returns, so it was sure to make money. With a try-it-and-see attitude, Yue Zhanqiang began preparing to build a chicken farm. He chose a site with relatively good transportation and location advantages, and converted the idle buildings left behind by a closed-down old school into a chicken farm, which saved costs to a certain extent. At first, Yue Zhanqiang raised more than 800 laying hens, but because he had underestimated hidden costs, the laying hens needed about a year and a half before they started producing eggs, and midway through he faced a severe shortage of funds. Unable to keep operating, Yue Zhanqiang switched from laying hens to fast-turnaround broiler chickens, but several batches of chicks he bought all died in large numbers. As an "outsider" starting a chicken farm for the first time, he lacked both technology and funds, and the difficulties were far greater than he had imagined. Setbacks and disappointment came one after another, and he once hesitated over whether to go back and continue his comfortable life in the city. In the farming ventures that followed, Yue Zhanqiang tried hatching chicks himself, but because he did not have a good grasp of breeding stock, technology and other aspects, these attempts also failed one by one. "I lost badly, there was no new capital coming in, and at the time I was in despair!" Later, when he had no funds, he borrowed from relatives and friends; when he lacked technology, he relied on studying earnestly on his own. He conducted extensive and in-depth market research, sought out teachers to learn skills, and over more than two months visited more than a dozen farms and called on experienced teachers and specialized farming households to learn from them and draw on their experience, and he achieved very good economic returns. Having had a preliminary taste of the joy of success, he became even more determined in his confidence and resolve to follow the path of getting rich by raising chickens.

Anyone who knows about poultry farming knows that disease prevention is the top priority in poultry raising and requires a huge amount of effort; otherwise, success is difficult. Yue Zhanqiang understood this well. With only a junior high school education, he quickly mastered farming techniques by strengthening his online learning, and through constant practice he worked out the best methods for treating chicken intestinal diseases and respiratory diseases. Every February, for newly hatched chicks, he personally kept watch in the chicken shed, adjusting the temperature, clearing away chicks that had piled up, and preventing the chicks from getting frostbitten or trampled. He did this for three all-night stretches in a row. Vaccinating the chicks was even more something he could not be careless about. Within two months of hatching, he vaccinated the chicks in rotation once every seven days, and at most he injected 500 chicks with vaccines in a single day. After that, he injected them in rotation with avian influenza vaccine once every two months until the chickens were ready for market.

From 1994 to the present, he has personally handled the key steps. He said that vaccinating the chickens himself can, first, reduce farming costs; second, help him fully grasp the health condition of the chickens; and third, allow him to accumulate farming experience in the process. The feed Yue Zhanqiang fed his laying hens was all corn, rice and rice bran bought from the homes of forestry farm workers and residents, with no pollution whatsoever. Because he loved to learn, was good at learning and was willing to endure hardship, he soon gained a solid command of the key techniques in every aspect of raising chickens, and his laying hen farming business began to develop rapidly.

Now, with the guarantee of technology, Yue Zhanqiang's chicken-raising scale has continued to grow, from 500 chickens in the first year of raising chickens to 1,000 in the second year and more than 1,500 in the third year... and now more than 3,500. In the eyes of the workers and residents, Yue Zhanqiang is a "Chicken King." All year round, he is with the chickens almost every day. Every morning, he carries sacks full of feed and goes into the chicken farm. Before he even finishes a shout, the laying hens gather around him as if surrounding the moon, staring at him intently...

"In 2017, he plans to build a site with a farming scale of up to 5,000 chickens, try developing an under-forest farming method, and strive to break through in annual egg production." Speaking of future development, Yue Zhanqiang was full of confidence.