Laying Duck Farming: Su Xinghua Started a Farm and Found the Road to Prosperity

The photo shows Su Xinghua's laying duck farm.

Every morning, Su Xinghua's laying duck farm in Xinqiao Village, Hongshui Town, Qianxi County is bustling with activity, the joyful quacking of ducks ringing across the fields. The couple needs at least over an hour just to collect more than 6,000 duck eggs, and they must also package them promptly while waiting for buyers to come and pick up the goods.

Xinqiao Village has a wide Tianba River and abundant water sources, and local villagers have long had a tradition of raising laying ducks. During the collective era, when Su Xinghua was 13 years old, he followed his older brother all the way to Sichuan to tend duck sheds. After the household contract responsibility system was introduced, he and more than 10 other farming households in the village continued to raise laying ducks, relying on the Tianba and the river. As the tide of migrant work rose, in 2005 Su Xinghua and his wife went to Zhejiang to ply their old trade, raising ducks for a large-scale farm. Early last year, the couple, having accumulated sufficient funds and skills, returned home to start a business, investing 350,000 yuan to build a 600 sq m color steel shed, clearing a 6,000 sq m pond, and purchasing 10,000 high-quality laying ducklings from Nanchang, Jiangxi, to develop laying duck farming.

Su Xinghua registered and established the Xinqiao Village Farmers' Breeding Professional Cooperative, bringing 5 farming households into the cooperative, with the farming scale reaching 50,000 ducks. In the autumn of last year, the cooperative's laying ducks entered the egg-laying period, with about 30,000 fresh eggs sold daily to Guiyang, Bijie, Zunyi and other surrounding counties and cities. Because Xinqiao Village obtained recognition from the Ministry of Agriculture as a pollution-free agricultural product planting and breeding base, and the agricultural products produced also obtained pollution-free agricultural product certification from the Ministry of Agriculture, the green-shell eggs produced are in high market demand and the products are in short supply. "A duck normally lays 300 eggs a year, each egg costs 0.65 yuan, and after deducting 150 yuan in feed costs, there is at least 40 yuan of profit. Raise 10,000 ducks, and earning around 300,000 yuan a year is no problem." Su Xinghua did a detailed calculation.

Early this year, Guizhou Shengde Ecological Agriculture Development Co., Ltd., which integrates poultry breeding, slaughtering and deep processing of products, settled in Qianxi County, bringing greater development space to the Xinqiao Village Farmers' Breeding Professional Cooperative. Su Xinghua seized the opportunity to set sail by borrowing a boat, joining the company's green-shell preserved egg processing production line, planning to carry out deep processing of products to increase added value, with the company fully responsible for the sales of all products. Even more encouraging, some farming households in Xinqiao Village are actively raising funds, preparing to join Su Xinghua's farmers' breeding professional cooperative for common development.