Scientific pig farming lets breeders handle the pig cycle with ease

Xu Houmei is from Shenjia Village, Yuexi Town, Kaixian County, Chongqing, and is a well-known large-scale pig farmer in the area. She has raised pigs for 30 years and has written a book of "secrets to wealth."

"At that time, the villagers were generally very poor and made a living from farming. There was no flour mill near the village, so villagers had to go to the market town several kilometers away to husk rice and grind flour." Unwilling to live in poverty, Xu Houmei thought: "I am young and strong, so why not open a flour mill? I can make money and also bring convenience to the villagers."

At the end of the first year, the net profit was 12,000 yuan. In this way, the couple accumulated their "first pot of gold" by running the flour milling business.

As the bran from milling flour increased, the processing workshop could no longer hold it all. Xu Houmei thought of using the bran to raise pigs, which could both solve the problem of too much bran and make money from pig farming. In order to learn breeding techniques, Xu Houmei often attended training, bought books on pig farming from bookstores, and invited technicians from the town animal husbandry and veterinary station to give on-site guidance. Whenever she had time, she ran to pig farms in surrounding towns to learn skills. Gradually, she mastered pigs' living habits and growth characteristics and accumulated pig farming experience. Later, when Xu Houmei saw that the flour mill business was getting worse and worse, she simply closed the flour mill and focused on raising pigs.

Today, Xu Houmei's Hongchun Family Farm has 3 pig houses with a total area of 1,800 sq m and 3 biogas digesters, with 43 breeding sows and more than 500 commercial pigs on hand, nearly 800 pigs sold annually, and an annual profit of more than 700,000 yuan.

"As everyone knows, the pig industry has a 'pig cycle.' If you want to make money raising pigs, you must adapt to it and have ways to respond," Xu Houmei said. "First of all, you must hold on. Whether pig prices rise or fall, you must persist, because after a fall there will definitely be a rise. If you stop raising pigs when prices fall, you won't be able to catch up when prices rise. You also have to dare to invest in improving the conditions of the pig farm and reduce costs through large-scale farming." Xu Houmei believes that large-scale pig farming must also establish its own breeding system for breeding pigs. "The single approach of buying piglets from outside for fattening has high costs and great market risks, and epidemics are hard to control, with many external constraints. If you want long-term development, you must build your own breeding pig farm and take the path of self-breeding and self-raising."

"Scientific management of the pig farm and prevention and control of diseases are major matters related to whether the pig farm can survive." For this reason, Xu Houmei specially hired animal husbandry and veterinary physicians to take charge of feeding management and disease prevention and control, and also often provided technical training to feeders so that they could better master breeding techniques and formulate complete-price feed.

"There is actually no trick to raising pigs. As long as you persist, dare to invest, have your own breeding system, and add scientific management, you will make money," Xu Houmei said.

Excerpted from Kaizhou Daily