Get rich raising sheep without worries, increase income even while unemployed at home

Cheng Xuezheng and his wife brave the heavy rain to prepare forage for the flock

Ran Bixian is feeding the flock

People's Daily Online, Chongqing, August 13 (Report) - One day in August, in Jingyuan Village, Banqiao Township, Youyang Autonomous County, a heavy rainstorm was pounding the earth. Villager Cheng Xuezheng and his wife Ran Bixian had their clothes soaked through by the icy rain, but the couple kept swinging their sickles, laboring on the hillside to prepare forage for their flock.

"Their hard work and their story of building something from nothing has inspired other villagers' enthusiasm for raising sheep," said Tian Guoping, Party Secretary of Banqiao Township. Under the couple's leadership, the number of sheep in Jingyuan Village grew from just a few dozen at the start to nearly a thousand today, completely changing the mindset of impoverished households that "wait, depend, and demand," and composing a song of prosperity for the mountain village through goat farming.

Unemployed at home, the township People's Congress chairman comes knocking to point the way

Cheng Xuezheng is an impoverished household in Group 6 of Jingyuan Village, with one elderly person and two children in primary school. Before 2015, he and his wife Ran Bixian had been working as material handlers at an electronics factory in Guizhou, where the couple earned 3,000 yuan a month.

In the twelfth lunar month of 2015, Cheng Xuezheng's 73-year-old mother Yang Fuxiang suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, which left her with aftereffects after treatment; from then on she had difficulty walking, and even eating and using the toilet required someone to attend to her. With elders to support and children to care for, and money needed for everything the family needed, the helpless Cheng Xuezheng and his wife had no choice but to stay home unemployed to care for the old and young while desperately searching for a way to get rich.

"Youyang's goat industry has been booming these past few years. You're idle at home, so why not get some goats to raise?" Jingyuan Village was a village lifted out of poverty as a whole by Banqiao Township in 2015. As the person responsible for assisting the village, Huang Mingtai, chairman of the township People's Congress, saw the awkward predicament of Cheng Xuezheng's family and took the initiative to visit them and share his "road to wealth."

Huang Mingtai's words awakened the dreamer. Cheng Xuezheng recalled that he once had 6 years of experience raising sheep and was thoroughly familiar with their habits and temperaments. "Back then the family was poor. We raised a dozen or so sheep of all sorts, and I took care of them all by myself," Cheng Xuezheng recalled.

That year, under Huang Mingtai's guidance, Cheng Xuezheng and his wife built a sheep pen of about 80 sq m. Ran Bixian said that because they had been working away from home before, they had nothing when they returned, so the building materials for the sheep pen were all pieced together from this villager and that.

Help from many sides solves the funding problem

At the end of 2015, many families had already begun preparing New Year goods, but Cheng Xuezheng's family was frowning with worry. It turned out that after building the pen, the family could no longer afford to buy lambs, and the pen they had built sat empty with no sheep living in it.

In desperation, Cheng Xuezheng sought out Huang Mingtai, who had pointed the way before. "Don't worry. The problems of lacking funds and lacking lambs, I'll take responsibility for helping you solve them." Huang Mingtai's words immediately gave Cheng Xuezheng a "reassurance pill."

Within just a few days, Huang Mingtai helped Cheng Xuezheng apply for 30,000 yuan in poverty-alleviation loan funds, and also worked on Ran Xiaohua, the village women's director, to lend Cheng Xuezheng 9 sheep to get started. Soon after, Yang Shengliang, a villager from Group 6, also voluntarily offered sheep, generously lending Cheng Xuezheng 9 adult ewes for breeding lambs.

With everyone's help, Cheng Xuezheng also bought 15 lambs from Nanmu, Guanqing and other places. From then on the couple worked from sunrise to sunset every day, busy tending the flock by day and staying up at night by lamplight to store green fodder for the flock to get through winter. "The hardest times are rainy days, because we're afraid the flock will catch a cold if we drive them out, so we have to cut grass on the hill in the rain to feed them," Ran Bixian said.

Borrowing pens to raise sheep, villagers run toward prosperity together

Through the couple's hard work, in just over half a year the size of Cheng Xuezheng's flock doubled, growing from 33 at the start to 67 today. In April this year, the couple also registered the Youyang Zhengxian Goat Farm, developing the goat farming industry together with other impoverished households in the village, running toward a moderately prosperous road to wealth.

Beside Cheng Xuezheng's sheep pen, two newly built sheep sheds have already begun to take shape, each with 5 pens, and each fully equipped with a disinfection room and a feed storage room. "These two newly built sheep pens are for other villagers to raise sheep," Ran Bixian said. They plan to rally the village's impoverished households together to develop the breeding industry in a concentrated way. Once the pens are completed, the couple will provide villagers with lambs and pens free of charge, making the local goat farming scale bigger and stronger, and even building it into a brand.

The reporter learned that at present villagers such as Ran Wei and Yang Zhuyuan in the village have reached agreements with Cheng Xuezheng to develop goat farming using the pens Cheng Xuezheng built. "More people means more strength. Once we've built up scale, we can also sell in a concentrated way to the market." Cheng Xuezheng explained his original intention in lending pens for sheep raising, saying this is a gradual process.

"Today is a good day, everything you wish for can come true..." When the reporter left, raindrops were still falling from the sky, but from the houses in the distance came Song Zuying's "Good Day," and the whole mountain village was filled with the song, growing nearer and nearer. (Wang Man, Li Mingjun)