Getting Rich by Raising Deer: The Income-Boosting Path Li Weifeng Has Blazed
Zhangzhao Village, Donghedian Town, Pingyu County, Henan Province, is a remote, impoverished village located at the junction of Henan and Anhui provinces. Since the beginning of this year, when Zhangzhao Village was included in Pingyu County's targeted poverty alleviation and targeted poverty eradication plan, the story of Li Weifeng, a native villager, making his fortune by raising deer has only just become known. When it comes to raising deer, this honest, unpretentious farmer with an impressive way of speaking immediately opened up.
Li Weifeng, now 33 years old, graduated from a vocational school and is a knowledge-based farmer. In 2006, with his family's help and guidance, he began learning the building materials business, and then in 2008 he opened a large building materials store in Miaocha Town, Linquan, Anhui, adjacent to his hometown. Business grew ever more brisk, and profits were quite substantial. In 2010, Li Weifeng unintentionally developed a strong interest in deer, an animal unfamiliar to him. Whenever he had spare time, he went online to search for and study relevant knowledge and information: deer, it turned out, were treasures from head to toe, and moreover, they could be raised in his hometown too. So the idea of raising deer at home began to take root and sprout in his heart.
When Li Weifeng told his family about his idea of raising deer, his wife Tian Weiping was very supportive, but his father strongly opposed it. His conservative-minded father thought his idea was far too unreliable, and that it would surely drag down his perfectly good building materials business!
Stubborn by nature, Li Weifeng had set his mind firmly on the path of raising deer. In 2013, with the help of the village Party branch secretary, he partnered with a friend to buy an idle cattle farm opposite the village committee and carried out preliminary renovations, and obtained a "National Key Protected Wild Animal Domestication and Breeding License." 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 introduced the first batch of sika deer from Beijing: 1 breeding stag, 15 does, and 4 production deer. The 20 deer cost a full 200,000 yuan, and what was most distressing was that, due to long-distance transport and over 20 hours of bumping along the road, plus the cold and windy weather at the time, within just two months of the 20 deer "settling" in his hometown, 5 died one after another! His partner withdrew his investment because of this. Li Weifeng felt unprecedented pressure. To cope, he successively took out over a million yuan from his building materials store.
In 2014, the does successfully gave birth to 11 fawns. The first crop of deer antler velvet "contributed" by the production deer was all bought up at high prices by local people who did business elsewhere and returned home for the Spring Festival, which strengthened Li Weifeng's faith in raising deer to create wealth. In 2015, he invested an additional more than 400,000 yuan, 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. That 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 already begun producing antler velvet. Through Li Weifeng's exploration, he also developed products such as deer blood wine, deer antler wine, and deer fetus paste, sold through the internet and physical stores. People from dozens to over a hundred li around kept coming to buy, and the products were in short supply.
At present, Li Weifeng's company has entered a stage of steady and healthy development, and the deer herd has increased to 34. Since 2014, Li Weifeng has harvested and sold more than 20 kilograms of deer antler velvet, brewed and sold a total of over 1,000 kilograms of deer blood (deer antler) wine, and produced and sold more than 100 packs of deer fetus paste. The actual income brought by raising deer has already reached several hundred thousand yuan. Right now, the pregnant does are about to give birth, and more than 10 fawns are expected to be added; Li Weifeng will also soon introduce two high-quality breeding stags and more than 15 breeding does from the Northeast, to ensure that within 3~5 years the total deer herd reaches more than 300. "The company's various infrastructure facilities are being newly built and expanded, and we plan to introduce artificial breeding, deep product processing and other techniques and equipment within the year, to make the necessary preparations for gradually achieving large-scale deer raising and industrialized production of deer products in the future," Li Weifeng said happily.
It is worth mentioning that Li Weifeng is willing to do his utmost for the village's implementation of targeted poverty alleviation and targeted poverty eradication. To help his fellow villagers escape poverty and become prosperous, Li Weifeng decided to explore the establishment of a deer-raising professional cooperative within the year, and has 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 on the premise of zero input and zero risk for the masses, distributing fawns and young deer to households for free-range raising, implementing unified management, unified feed supply, unified epidemic prevention, unified sales, as well as unified training plus on-site guidance, and unified settlement plus year-end dividends.