Returning to Chongqing Bishan to raise geese and sing a song of prosperity
"Come, come, come..." Recently, in Group 7 of Jinlong Village, Guangpu Town, Bishan District, Chongqing, as soon as villager Wang Bangjie scattered a few handfuls of green grass and called out a few times, a chorus of "honk, honk" rang out from the woods and paddy fields in front of his home, and a large flock of grey geese came waddling over, twisting their plump rears.
"These are the wild geese I raise. This flock has more than 70, and they are specially kept as breeding geese," said Wang Bangjie, the owner. In early last year, he transferred 6 mu of paddy fields to try raising wild geese. Now, these geese are growing very well. They eat grain such as corn and rice as well as green grass, and they are very popular in the market, selling for about 30 yuan per jin.
Wang Bangjie previously worked in ** as a truck driver. Why did he give up his job and return hometo raise geese?
In recent years, whenever he came home for Spring Festival, Wang Bangjie saw that his hometown changed more and more each year. Many fellow villagers were raising goats, peacocks and native pigs, and he was tempted too. During last year's Spring Festival, Wang Bangjie, who had always loved farming, no longer wanted to drift around outside and leave his wife and children at home, so he decided to return home and start a business.
But many villagers raise ducks, chickens and pigs, and he could not simply follow in their footsteps. That would not only fail to make money because of the sluggish market, but might also hurt friendships through price wars when goods could not be sold.
Just when he was at a loss, he suddenly remembered that the wild goose meat he ate during Spring Festival was tender, soft and had an excellent taste. Wang Bangjie then looked it up online and learned that wild geese have strong foraging ability, wide adaptability, tolerance of coarse feed and strong disease resistance. Their meat is highly nutritious and also has effects such as replenishing qi and tonifying deficiency, harmonizing the stomach and quenching thirst, relieving cough and reducing phlegm, and removing lead toxicity.
Wang Bangjie began searching everywhere to buy young geese, and also boughtbooks on raising geeseand looked up information online to learn breeding techniques.
"From the beginning, I planned ecological grazing, and divided the goose-raising area into a feeding area, a grazing area and a pen area," Wang Bangjie said. Zoned grazing is better for management and environmental protection. Although ecologically raised geese need 4 months to be ready for market, 1 month longer than with ordinary farming methods, the price is much higher.
When he first started raising geese, he always took care of the goslings very carefully. He started with just a few dozen, and within a few months the number increased to more than 150.
"At present, I have already sold 80, each goose weighing 10 jin, with sales of more than 20,000 yuan," Wang Bangjie said. Last year was mainly for learning and summing up breeding experience. This year, he will expand the scale of breeding and expects to raise 3 seasons, 1,000 wild geese in total.
"After deducting breeding costs, the profit is about 150 yuan per goose, so 1,000 geese means 150,000 yuan..." Although raising geese is very hard work, at the thought that they are so popular in the market, Wang Bangjie's heart blooms with joy.