IT elite returns home to start a business selling eggs, develops more than 80 distributors
When it comes to starting a business, when it comes to raising chickens, it seems everyone can find similar entrepreneurs around them - free-range, green, ecological, feed-free... These "exclusive terms" for raising chickens seem to have become very common. If high technology and chicken raising are linked together, can you imagine what kind of scene that would be?
With so many chickens being raised, why is the grass still so dense? This is the question the villagers and fellow townspeople ask the most. Tan Zilong says with a smile that raising chickens must also develop in harmony with the trees and environment - this is a big subject.
After 5 years as a Beijing drifter, he brought his wife back home to start a business
"Actually, when I was in university, I thought that one day in the future I could raise chickens at my doorstep, but I also felt it wasn't presentable and was afraid of being laughed at, so I became a Beijing drifter." Tan Zilong from Linyi spoke of his original intention for starting a business. The reason he wanted to raise chickens for his business still came from his love of agriculture - he just likes dealing with agriculture.
Like all Beijing drifters, after graduation Tan Zilong worked in Beijing in the IT industry with an annual salary of one million yuan. In the eyes of relatives and friends, it was a promising job. But when the Beijing drifters were all vowing to make a big breakthrough, when colleagues were drinking coffee in cafes and looking at the street scene, Tan Zilong felt that none of this was the life he wanted. Even holding coffee and watching a movie, he felt a sense of wasting time.
"I always feel that no matter how hard I work in Beijing, I don't have the feeling of returning to my roots. The more I see the prosperity of Beijing, the more I want to go home and start a business." Tan Zilong said.
With a passion for agriculture, an IT guy brought his wife back to Beishigou Village, Nanzhangzhuang Township, Feixian County, Linyi, and began his entrepreneurial path of ecological farming.
Technological innovation, raising chickens and producing eggs off the beaten path
In traditional impressions, the business of raising chickens and producing eggs seems to already have a formula, but on Tan Zilong's entrepreneurial path, it was completely different. He bought 2,000 free-range chick seedlings and optimized the genes of the chicks through crossbreeding. Crossbreeding can give chicks various advantages: the genes of laying hens can produce more eggs, so crossbreed with laying hens; the genes of wild pheasants have strong resistance, so crossbreed with wild pheasants... After repeated experiments, chick seedlings dying because of experiments happened every day. In Tan Zilong's view, this was a price that experiments must pay, but in the eyes of others, this was a destructive experiment, digging his own grave. The first to be unable to sit still were Tan Zilong's parents. Watching large numbers of chick seedlings die every day, with losses of tens of thousands of yuan in the blink of an eye, no amount of coaxing or pleading from his parents helped, and in the end they angrily slammed the door and left.
About nearly a year passed. After continuous experiments on the 2,000 chick seedlings, only more than 100 survived in the end, but a new breed of free-range chicken had also been cultivated. Tan Zilong named the new breed: Yuchun No. 1. A single chicken lays an average of up to 220 eggs per year, while ordinary native chickens lay only about 100 eggs. These chickens not only peck at insects on the ground; Tan Zilong also specially made "nutritional meals" for them to increase nutrition. High-protein yeast powder was used to replace soybean meal; nutritional ratios were designed according to demand at different stages of chicken growth; solar lights were used throughout the chicken coops; the material ratios on the heated beds were also researched by himself... The result of all these innovations was that costs were decreasing, egg quality was improving, and benefits were continuously increasing.
"My research on raising chickens and producing eggs is not only about chick seedlings - feed, probiotics, and microecological preparations were all researched by me, as well as the fermentation bed. Chicken manure falling onto the fermentation bed is decomposed within three hours, and the energy released by decomposition can be absorbed by the chickens." When Tan Zilong talks about his research on raising chickens and producing eggs, he talks endlessly. The simplest example: during the heavy snow in the winter of 2015, not a single chicken got sick; instead, in such harsh weather, some chickens were still laying eggs. This made the villagers and townspeople all somewhat "marvel."
This series of high-tech chicken raising made Tan Zilong's chickens and eggs become different from others. Because their genes combined various excellent qualities of free-range chickens, wild pheasants, and laying hens, the eggshell colors of these eggs were also particularly rich, with more than a dozen kinds including pale green, pale blue, olive, pink, and earth yellow. This is rarely seen on the market. Tan Zilong calls them "colored eggs."
Craftsman spirit, focused on selling eggs for a lifetime
During the interview, one could constantly feel the impressiveness of Tan Zilong's high-tech chicken raising. Some problems that had troubled chicken farmers for many years were all solved through Tan Zilong's research. A hen brooding is a natural instinct. Faced with this instinct, the most common methods used by chicken farmers are tying the chicken by one leg to a tree, or directly feeding it medicine. Some chickens cannot be stopped from brooding even after being fed medicine, so Tan Zilong looked through various books and finally found a method in Americans' chicken-raising experience. "This method was not invented by me, but it is really effective. It is to isolate the hen in a cage for 6 hours and give it plenty of water to drink. This method will at least prevent brooding again within half a year." Tan Zilong said that actually raising chickens is countless small experiences, and many foreigners' experiences are particularly good. He is just a learner.
In 2014, after the chick seedlings were cultivated, Tan Zilong began to focus on selling eggs. Having 5 years of struggling experience as a Beijing IT drifter also made his path of selling eggs somewhat smoother. "When I was in Beijing, I did work in sales and similar jobs, so selling eggs is not a problem." Tan Zilong told reporters that because special attention was paid when feeding the chickens, the probiotics and preparations made the cholesterol content of the eggs relatively low. Now the farm can produce more than 1,500 free-range chicken eggs every day, and the price of each egg is between 1.5 yuan and 2 yuan. Because most eggs are sold to other places through online platforms, in order to ensure convenient transportation, Tan Zilong also specially hired someone to design egg trays of special material. The shape design of the egg trays is full of wisdom and innovation, and the transport damage rate is almost zero. Now the farm has developed more than 80 distributors across the country, and the "colored eggs" produced every day are in short supply. In fact, Tan Zilong's farm creativity lies not only in breeding technology, but also in the concept of green environmental protection.
Although Tan Zilong is now making free-range chicken eggs flourish and the farm has begun to take shape, his goals are not limited to this. "Using selling free-range chicken eggs as a breakthrough point, gradually develop three-dimensional ecological planting and breeding, and strive to build within five years a typical three-dimensional planting and breeding ecological agriculture science and technology demonstration base in the southern Shandong and northern Jiangsu region, driving more people to get rich together." Tan Zilong said that the entrepreneurial path is very tiring, so tiring that he wanted to give up countless times, but since he chose the path of raising chickens and selling eggs, he must do it to the extreme, learn from the craftsman spirit of Germans, and do only one thing in life: sell eggs.