Post-85 Grain Grower Raises Grain and Sheep at the Same Time

In Yushu City, Jilin Province, 31-year-old Jiang Enkai is a widely known large-scale grain grower. Young as he is, he is already an "old hand" at farming.

In the past two years, Jiang Enkai has achieved good economic returns by using corn stalks to feed fattening sheep. Nowadays, he is not only a large-scale grain grower but also a well-known large-scale livestock breeder locally.

In Rongyu Village, Gongpeng Town, Yushu City, when the reporter met Jiang Enkai, he was checking the growth of the mutton sheep in the pen. Seeing the reporter, he excitedly opened up.

"These sheep are a breed introduced from South Africa, called Dorper. Their feature is good meat quality. After crossbreeding with local sheep, the next generation are all meat sheep with very good taste, and their fertility rate is relatively high," Jiang Enkai said.

Corn is the main grain crop in Jilin Province. While Jilin Province has achieved consecutive grain harvests, it has also produced a great deal of a by-product - stalks.

At present, Jiang Enkai manages 524 hectares of transferred land. Every autumn, he is happy about the harvest on the one hand, and troubled about how to dispose of 3,500 tons of stalks on the other.

After consulting a large amount of materials, Jiang Enkai came up with the idea of raising sheep.

Jiang Enkai told the reporter that 1,000 sheep can completely convert more than 3,500 tons of stalks. "At first I introduced 500 ewes to convert the stalks. Sheep manure can also be returned to the fields as farmyard manure." In order to raise the sheep well, Jiang Enkai inspected and studied in many places. After repeated experiments, he also specially designed a sheep house suitable for local use.

In front of the sheep pen, the reporter saw that bamboo strips of uniform length were neatly laid into a flat surface with a certain gap left between it and the ground.

Jiang Enkai excitedly introduced his idea to the reporter: "These bamboo strips are a sheep kang. The manure excreted by the sheep on top goes directly to the bottom. Two motors scrape the sheep manure back and forth repeatedly. After it is scraped out, it can be loaded onto a cart with a shovel and taken directly to the fields for fertilizing."

In addition to the unique sheep kang, the water supply, drainage and manure pumping system of the sheep house is also equipped with automated equipment, which facilitates management and saves labor. At present, Jiang Enkai's household has more than 700 mutton sheep on hand, and all the management work can be completed by only two people.

"Feed is added twice a day and hay twice a day. The rest is delivering lambs and giving injections to the few sheep with minor problems," said Yang Dianyong, a feeder.

At present, Jiang Enkai, with the new title of "large-scale sheep raiser," is planning to expand the scale of production and strive to market 30,000 mutton sheep annually.

"I make more money raising sheep than other small household raisers. For each sheep raised by small households, the annual feed cost is 300 yuan, while the stalks my sheep eat cost nothing, which greatly reduces the feeding cost," Jiang Enkai said.