College graduate returns home to raise pigs, uses technology to open the door to wealth

While many rural children jump out of the "farm gate" and struggle to make a place for themselves in the city, Liu Yang, a college graduate from Baoding Vocational and Technical College, plunged headlong back into the countryside to become a "pig farmer."

Bonded with pigs from childhood, returned home to raise pigs after graduation

Liu Yang had often watched his mother raise pigs since he could remember. Influenced by his mother, Liu Yang often helped her feed the pigs when he came home from school. But because they used the traditional pig-raising methods passed down through generations, the pigs grew slowly, production efficiency was low, and the mortality rate was high. Liu Yang, who loved raising pigs, saw this and felt anxious. After graduating from high school, Liu Yang chose to apply to the veterinary medicine program at Baoding Vocational and Technical College, wanting to contribute to the livestock industry in his hometown.

In 2012, after graduating from the municipal vocational and technical college and completing a year of professional internship and practice outside, Liu Yang gave up the opportunity to work and live in the city and resolutely chose to return to his hometown, Shuidong Village in Laishui County, to run a pig farm together with his mother and become a "pig farmer."

From then on, people could see Liu Yang busily working at the pig farm every day. Whether mixing feed, feeding pigs, cleaning pig manure, or breeding sows, delivering piglets, disease prevention, and disinfecting the pig farm, he did everything himself, staying busy from 4 in the morning until past 9 at night. Through Liu Yang's hard work, the pig farm had 33 sows and more than 400 pigs on hand.

Avoiding breeding risks, scientific pig raising brings returns

Liu Yang is very confident about scientific breeding. "I believe scientific pig raising can make us rich. As long as we make good use of science and technology, we can definitely avoid breeding risks and maximize breeding profits." The first thing he did after returning home to raise pigs was renovate the pig housing to improve the pigs' "welfare benefits." He divided the pig housing into five different functional areas: breeding room, gestation room, farrowing room, nursery room, and growing room, with semi-automatic feeding and separation of clean and dirty paths, which is both hygienic and enables standardized management. At the same time, he upgraded the monitoring equipment. Using one computer, one network cable, and several cameras, he could take in the entire farm "at a glance" while sitting in front of the computer. He also downloaded a remote intelligent monitoring system sync app on his phone. As long as there was a network, he could know the situation at the farm clearly from anywhere, saving time and effort, convenient and quick. Since the monitoring equipment was put into use, the piglet survival rate has risen to over 90%.

In the pig farming industry, there is a saying: "profit one year, lose one year, break even for three years." Besides fresh pork prices fluctuating with the market, the biggest loss for pig farmers comes from swine epidemics. From the very beginning of returning home to raise pigs, Liu Yang put "epidemic prevention" first. In December 2015, most parts of China experienced a "once-in-a-century cold wave," and temperatures dropped sharply. Pig farms around Liu Yang's hometown broke out with a "diarrhea" epidemic, causing large numbers of piglets to die. Some pig farmers lost hundreds of thousands in a single incident. Because of advance epidemic prevention and proper management, Liu Yang's pig farm successfully escaped this "disaster" and achieved a good year with more than 600 pigs sent to market and a net profit of more than 600,000 yuan.

Expanding breeding scale, making the industry bigger and stronger

Liu Yang believes that without strong technology and modern equipment, one cannot persist in the breeding industry; only by taking the path of moderately scaled breeding can one gain advantages in financing, purchase prices, disease control, and environmental protection, effectively resist market risks, and guarantee the interests of pig farmers to the greatest extent.

Since 2013, Liu Yang began expanding his family pig farm. To do this, he traveled to large-scale farms nearby, returned to his alma mater to consult teachers, transferred 30 mu of land, started the pig farm expansion project, and formulated a scientific and feasible standardized pig farm construction plan.

"The expanded pig farm is divided into a management area, production area, isolation area, and manure storage and treatment area. It will install fully automatic feeding and manure cleaning systems and implement manual regulation of the pig housing climate to ensure healthy breeding." Talking about the new pig farm construction, this dark-skinned, taciturn young man's face glowed red. "The pig farm will also build an ecological, environmentally friendly, energy-type sewage treatment system. Pig waste will be collected centrally through pipes, then fermented in a biogas digester. Biogas will be used for heating and generating electricity. Solids can be processed into organic fertilizer, and liquids can be used to irrigate and fertilize fields, truly achieving zero emissions." Inspired by this ideal, in June 2015, Liu Yang registered and established "Laishui County Dongyang Livestock Farm."

"In a few years, my farm will send at least 5,000 pigs to market each year, becoming the largest pig farm at the foot of the mountains in Laishui County." Regarding future plans, Liu Yang appears very confident. He says he is a "pig-farming peasant willing to endure hardship," and on the road of scientific pig raising he has more and more drive and confidence. Although his entrepreneurship has achieved modest success, his entrepreneurial dream is always still on the way...