Ecological laying hen farming helps farmers in Xixiu District, Guizhou onto the road to prosperity

Every morning at 6 o'clock, Wang Xingfen, a villager from Mengbang Village, Yangwu Township, Xixiu District, wakes up to the crowing of roosters. At dawn, while preparing the chicken feed, she goes to the places where the laying hens like to lay eggs to collect them. On May 22, she collected 50 native eggs. Looking at these eggs of varying sizes, she happily calculated in her mind: in just over a month, these laying hens will enter their peak production period, and by then she will have an income of two to three hundred yuan per day.

Wang Xingfen's family is one of the 20 ecological laying hen farming households in Yangwu Township. In April this year, Wang Xingfen and her husband made up their minds to follow Anshun Xinwang Livestock and Poultry Breeding Company and take up ecological laying hen farming. Yangwu Township uses the "company + cooperative + farmer" industry-driven model, and through poverty alleviation projects, subsidizes each ecological laying hen farming household with 20,000 yuan for building chicken coops and purchasing chicks. At Wang Xingfen's farming base, the reporter saw rows of "chicken villas" built on the green grass, white laying hens leisurely looking for insects under the plum trees, and with one call from the owner, thousands of laying hens rush in from all directions, waiting for the owner to feed them delicacies.

"My laying hens have just started laying eggs, so some of these eggs are as small as pigeon eggs, but these young eggs are very nutritious." Wang Xingfen told the reporter while collecting eggs. Her family raised 1,500 laying hens this year, covering 8 mu, and one "chicken villa" can hold 270 chickens. After 120 days of raising, they enter the egg-laying period, which can last from 300 to 500 days. "The eggs laid by the native chickens raised free-range by farmers are purchased by the agricultural professional cooperative at 9 jiao each, then transported uniformly to Anshun Xinwang Livestock and Poultry Breeding Company, which packages them uniformly and sells them at 1.5 yuan each. After the egg-laying period is over, the company also purchases the laying hens that no longer lay eggs at 15 yuan per jin. Farmers can earn money from both the eggs and the sale of the chickens." said Fu Shixiong, deputy township head of the township.

In order to achieve standardized and large-scale farming, Yangwu Township applies "five unified" management to ecological laying hens, namely unified feed (corn) supply, unified seedling raising, unified technical guidance, unified disinfection and epidemic prevention, and unified buyback. Specialized farming training is regularly held every week to improve the professional level of farming households. According to Fu Shixiong, the ecological laying hen farming in Yangwu Township has just started. By the peak production period of the laying hens, 8,000 to 9,000 native eggs will be produced every day. Through targeted poverty alleviation by developing ecological laying hen farming, part of the poor farming households can be lifted out of poverty. One year later, the 20 poor households that develop laying hen farming will achieve a per capita net income of more than 10,000 yuan per year.