Pigeon farming helps Zhao Zhanzheng of Qinghe County onto the road to prosperity

Zhao Zhanzheng, a villager living in Talate Village, Arele Township, Qinghe County, often carries out unconventional planting and breeding experiments in the village, actively seeking ways to explore paths to prosperity. Some of his methods for increasing income and becoming better off are always ahead of others, and he is almost always the first person in the village to "eat the crab."

On December 1, Zhao Zhanzheng, a villager of Talate Village, Arele Township, was selecting newly market-ready pigeons for customers who had come to buy pigeons.

Ma Guobiao, a resident of Qinghe Town, said: "I bought 20. They're very nourishing. Conditions are good now, so if you pay you can buy them. In the past, even if you paid, you couldn't buy them."

In Zhao Zhanzheng's pigeon shed, pigeons filled the ground, the racks and the roof beams. In the summer of 2015, he specially introduced 360 breeding pigeons of two breeds, Vahi and Yudian, from **Hualing Market, and converted his own vacant cattle pen into a pigeon house for raising pigeons to boost income.

Zhao Zhanzheng, a villager of Talate Village, Arele Township, said: "In a year, including summer and winter, 300 pigeons bred more than 3,000. The returns were quite good. Apart from feed and apart from costs, there were tens of thousands of yuan in profit in between. The returns from raising pigeons in 2016 were, on the whole, very good. From March to October, an average of 200 pigeons were sold each month. The breeding was quite impressive. By autumn, more than 1,600 were slaughtered at one time, leaving more than 400 as breeding pigeons for next year. In 2017, I plan to bring along several households in our village that are willing to raise pigeons, provide them with some breeding pigeons, provide some feed, and pass on all the pigeon-raising techniques to them, so that everyone can increase their income together."