Free-range chickens raised under the forest bring in good profits

Recently, the more than 1,000 forest-raised "free-range chickens" kept by Li Haiming, a forest chicken farmer at the Chaoyang Operations Station of Beixing Farm, were all ordered up by merchants from Qitaihe City and Mishan, bringing Li Haiming nearly 40,000 yuan in net profit.

In recent years, Beixing Farm has vigorously promoted the development of the under-forest economy. While encouraging the planting of large hazelnuts and Chinese medicinal herbs, it has guided employees to develop under-forest breeding projects, among which forest chickens have won the favor of consumers. In this breeding model, the chickens are not fed any additive-containing feed; they mainly catch insects and pick up grass seeds in the mountain forest, so they are pure "mountain chickens." Although the chickens do not grow fat, the chicken meat is highly nutritious, green and healthy. In addition, the chickens are not kept in pens and roam and wander among the trees all day long, so because they get plenty of exercise, the chicken meat tastes good. Therefore, after being put on the market, although the price is more than twice that of ordinary broiler chickens, it is still welcomed by farm residents and consumers in neighboring Qitaihe City. According to statistics from the forestry section, there are 15 farms in the whole farm with a forest chicken breeding scale of more than 1,000 birds, with a total of more than 50,000 birds, making it a good project for employees to get rich. (Mou Changzheng, Yu Peng)