Special sika deer farming helps villagers shake off poverty and head toward prosperity

"People nowadays have ever higher expectations for health, and deer antler velvet and deer bone both have important medicinal and economic value, so farming sika deer has very good market prospects." said Luo Shizheng, a villager from Group 7 of Hengshi Village, Puji Town, Wangcang County, Sichuan. When he worked away from home in Northeast China years ago, he found that many local people had become rich by farming sika deer, while no one in his hometown was raising sika deer, so he felt this industry was worth trying.

Early last year, after visiting Changchun, Jilin to study sika deer farming techniques, Luo Shizheng became even more determined. He invested 320,000 yuan in succession to build a farm of more than 240 sq m, introduced 30 Shuangyang subspecies sika deer, and began his own entrepreneurial journey. He not only succeeded in his own business, but also led 5 households in the village onto the path of special farming.

"Sika deer farming is delicate work." Luo Shizheng said. "They eat dry grass in the morning and evening and fresh grass at noon. They cannot be fed fodder with too much moisture. Things like sweet potato vines, cabbage and orchid cabbage must be dried until they have little moisture left before they can be eaten, and they must have a guaranteed supply of drinking water every day."

In order to raise the sika deer well, whenever he had time he hurried to study sika deer farming knowledge and browse deer-farming information online, constantly summarising and improving practical techniques for cleaning the pens, feeding, cooling and epidemic prevention.

"Last year 5 male deer reached adulthood, and we began cutting deer antler velvet in mid-May and late August, twice a year. Each sika deer produces more than 2 jin of antler velvet, and at a market price of 4,000 yuan per jin, last year we earned about 50,000 yuan from selling antler velvet alone." Luo Shizheng said.

Luo Shizheng explained that a male deer can live up to 15 years. Excluding the three-year growth period when it produces no antler velvet, the antler velvet a male deer produces over its lifetime can sell for about 120,000 yuan; sika deer that do not produce antler velvet can still be sold to restaurants at 6,000 yuan each, and adding income from deer whip, deer sinew and deer tail, and excluding the roughly 1,500 yuan annual farming cost per sika deer, raising one male deer can earn more than 100,000 yuan.

In order to encourage more villagers to farm sika deer, Luo Shizheng set up Jingyuyuan Deer Industry Co., Ltd. in December last year. "At present 5 villagers have signed farming agreements with me. In July we plan to go to Northeast China to buy 100 adult deer and give them to local people to raise, then collect and sell them in a unified way." Luo Shizheng said.

"Sika deer farming has already begun to take shape. Medicinal herb buyers from other places think the antler velvet here is plump in shape and relatively pure in quality, and they have already established sales channels with me, mainly selling to medicinal herb processing plants in Chengdu and Anhui." Speaking of the sales market, Luo Shizheng is not worried at all.

"Every part of the sika deer is valuable. Right now I can only harvest antler velvet. The next step is to develop a relatively complete deer product industry chain so that income will be higher." Luo Shizheng said he plans to bring in fine-processing equipment for deer products and gradually produce a series of products such as deer meat, deer hide and deer bone wine in the future to increase the added value of deer products.

"Next, I plan to invest another 2 million yuan to expand the scale of sika deer farming and, through the company plus farmers model, help more fellow villagers shake off poverty and become prosperous." Luo Shizheng is full of confidence in the future.

(Guo Lan, Wang Jue)