Li Weifeng of Pingyu County, Henan, finds a new path to prosperity by raising deer
Zhangzhao Village in Donghedian Town, Pingyu County, lies at the border between Henan and Anhui, a little-known and remote village. As the village was included by the county Party committee and county government in the targeted poverty alleviation and targeted poverty eradication plan, Wanlu Deer Industry Company, located opposite the village committee, and its boss Li Weifeng began to come into people's view.
Li Weifeng, now 33 years old, graduated from a vocational school. In 2006, with the help and guidance of his uncle, Li Weifeng began learning the building materials business, and later the business grew more and more prosperous, with quite generous profits. In 2010, by a chance opportunity, Li Weifeng learned online about a health product called "deer placenta paste", and thus developed a strong interest in the unfamiliar animal, the deer. Through online searches and study of related knowledge, he learned that every part of the deer is valuable, and that deer could also be raised in his hometown!
In 2013, with the help of the village Party secretary, Li Weifeng and a friend jointly bought the idle cattle farm opposite the village committee and carried out initial renovations, and obtained a "License for Captive Breeding of National Key Protected Wild Animals". During this period, he also spent 3 months studying on site at a deer farm in Beijing. At the end of that year, Li Weifeng spent 200,000 yuan to bring in from Beijing 1 breeding stag, 15 does and 4 production deer. Sadly, due to long-distance transport and over 20 hours of bumpy travel, plus the cold and windy weather at the time, within just two months of these 20 deer "settling" in his hometown, 5 of them died one after another! And Li Weifeng's partner also announced his withdrawal due to a shortage of funds.
Difficulties cannot defeat a true hero. Through Li Weifeng's efforts, in 2014 the does successfully gave birth to 11 fawns, and the first batch of deer antler produced by the production deer was entirely bought up by local people who did business elsewhere and returned home for the Spring Festival. This enabled Li Weifeng to dig up his "first bucket of gold".
In 2015, Li Weifeng added more than 400,000 yuan in investment, built a new feed workshop and warehouse, installed a complete set of new feed production equipment, launched a new silage processing technique, and also planted sweet elephant grass, barley grass and other crops that sika deer like to eat, and formally registered and established Pingyu County Wanlu Deer Industry Company. In the same year, the does successfully gave birth to another 8 fawns, all of which survived and grew well. Moreover, the 11 fawns self-bred the previous year had begun producing antler, and all the young does had successfully conceived. While carefully tending these "golden nuggets" of his, Li Weifeng also actively innovated, successively developing products such as deer blood wine, deer antler wine and deer placenta paste, sold through the internet and physical stores, with demand exceeding supply, earning several hundred thousand yuan a year.
Li Weifeng said: "Raising deer has broad prospects and great potential. But for poor households, the threshold is very high and the risks are also relatively great." In order to lead everyone to truly achieve poverty alleviation and prosperity through raising deer, with the encouragement and help of the relevant county departments, Li Weifeng decided to establish a deer-raising professional cooperative. At present he has already initially drafted the cooperative's charter and worked out the basic approach and support model of "company + cooperative + farming households", that is, with the company as the backing, the cooperative as the platform, and the premise of zero investment and zero risk for the people, distributing by household, free-range raising of fawns and young deer, implementing unified management, unified feed supply, unified epidemic prevention, unified sales, as well as unified training plus on-site guidance, unified settlement plus year-end dividends, and so on.