Lu Zigan, a stone goat farmer, gave up migrant work and returned home to lead villagers to prosperity

Lu Zigan carefully tending the stone goats he raises.

In the goat-raising industry of Qiaotou Town, Huaiji County, Lu Zigan is widely known, and the villagers who started businesses alongside him all call him the "goat herder." Having raised stone goats for 6 years, Lu Zigan not only enriched his own family but also motivated and helped more than a dozen households in the village to raise stone goats, helping villagers earn a living and support their families on their native land.

Returning home to start a business as a goat herder

In July 1998, 16-year-old Lu Zigan returned home after graduating from junior high school. Holding the plow and harrow used by his ancestors, he worked from dawn to dusk, braving wind and rain, facing the loess with his back to the sky, cultivating and sowing on the mere few mu of contracted farmland his family had.

Although he worked from sunrise to sunset, due to a lack of production skills and operating on a small scale, after a year Lu Zigan could only make a living, and life was tight. He had never found a way to prosperity. The tiring and monotonous farm work made Lu Zigan more clear-headed, while the exciting world outside was also calling to dream chasers. In 2000, with a burst of drive and passion, Lu Zigan, together with young people of the same age in his village, went to work in garment factories and hardware factories in Dongguan and other places, pursuing the dream of getting rich. However, things did not go as hoped. After working hard for a month, he earned only more than 1,000 yuan. After deducting expenses such as rent and food, little was left, and the dream of making a fortune by working away from home became a bubble from then on.

"When God closes a door, He will surely open a window for you." The setbacks and failures in farming and migrant work did not stop Lu Zigan's steps forward or his passion for entrepreneurship; instead, they made his steps firmer and his heart fuller of passion.

After returning home from migrant work, Lu Zigan thought repeatedly and discovered that local stone goats offered many business opportunities: market demand for mutton sheep was increasing day by day, while the local specialty breed, the stone goat, had a small breeding population and a shortage of supply. Stone goats have characteristics such as fast growth, strong reproductive capacity and disease resistance, as well as tender meat, fresh taste and a mild mutton odor. The vast local stone mountains and abundant mountain grass resources could solve the problems of raising space and feed. Therefore, in Lu Zigan's view, raising stone goats was certainly full of promise.

In the early spring of 2010, he scraped together more than 40,000 yuan from relatives and friends, purchased 80 local stone goats, contracted nearly 200 mu of mountain land to plant green grass and build goat sheds, and began a vigorous entrepreneurial path of goat raising, becoming a "goat herder."

Making a "goat fortune" from the cracks in the rocks

When he first started raising goats, Lu Zigan was a layman and also encountered problems such as not understanding technology and lacking funds, but these "roadblocks" did not make him retreat or stop.

To solve the problem of development funds, Lu Zigan borrowed money from relatives and friends and applied to the government for loans. His wife also helped build goat sheds to save expenses.

Lacking technology and experience, Lu Zigan bought relevant books on goat raising from bookstores to study, and humbly asked peers for advice; at the same time, he invited and contacted technical personnel from county science and technology, animal husbandry and other departments for on-site guidance; meanwhile, he actively participated in training courses organized by the county and town to learn methods. Once he finished the work at hand, Lu Zigan earnestly studied stone goat feeding management and disease prevention and control techniques.

Hard work pays off. After years of study, exploration and summary, Lu Zigan mastered solid scientific goat-raising skills. Now, by observing factors such as the goat's eyes, physique, skin color, and urine and feces, he can diagnose whether a goat is sick; by a goat's panting he can also determine the goat's physical condition.

In the process of raising goats, because the stone goat is a herbivorous domestic animal with a very broad diet and characteristics of being lively and active, loving cleanliness and loving dryness, Lu Zigan built the goat sheds halfway up the stone mountain on high and dry terrain to ensure that the places where the goats moved did not accumulate water, and the goat sheds faced south with their backs to the north, so they could get sunlight in winter.

During the day, Lu Zigan drove the goats up the slopes to graze and exercise, letting them nibble the green grass in the cracks of the stone mountain; in the evening, he regularly fed the flock corn and salt water, so the flock returned to the goat sheds on their own in the evening; on rainy days, when the goats could not go out to forage, he cut grass and prepared feed, mixing and chopping corn stalks, soybean stalks, sweet potato vines, sweet potato vines, peanut shells and other materials, storing and fermenting them to make "rations" the goats loved to eat, and appropriately feeding some grain. In this way, the flock was cared for properly by him.

When developing large-scale goat raising, Lu Zigan focused on careful management and meticulous care, and insisted on putting disease prevention and control measures first. Regardless of severe cold or intense heat, he purposefully selected vaccines for the flock and carried out regular preventive vaccinations. At the same time, from forage to the environment of the goat sheds, he ensured that feed and drinking water were clean, pollution-free and not moldy, and built disinfection pools at the entrances and exits, regularly replacing the cleaning medicinal solution and cleaning the goat pens, disinfecting once a week. Now, the stone goats raised by Lu Zigan have fewer diseases, grow quickly, and their reproduction rate has also greatly increased.

"The flock structure must be adjusted in a timely manner, eliminating old, disabled, weak and sick goats, increasing the proportion of breeding ewes, raising them carefully, and focusing on lambing, survival and epidemic prevention." Now, Lu Zigan speaks eloquently about the essentials of goat raising.

As big as the heart is, so big is the dream. Through unremitting efforts and hard labor, Lu Zigan achieved relatively abundant results. At present, the goat inventory has reached more than 800, the annual regular slaughter volume is more than 400, and annual income has reached more than 600,000 yuan, setting him on the path to prosperity through goat raising. He built a new building for his family and also bought a motorcycle, television and other household appliances.

"I plan to further expand the scale and strive to develop to more than 1,000!" Lu Zigan said boldly.

Leading villagers toward moderate prosperity

Relying on diligent hands and a business-minded head, Lu Zigan's life gradually became prosperous, but he did not forget to help the villagers and friends around him, often communicating with them and helping them solve problems in production and life; having learned professional goat-raising techniques, he also did not hide them, actively and generously providing free breeding methods to other farmers, personally passing on experience and providing information, "escorting" the farmers.

"I'm not afraid of others taking business away. If there's money, everyone earns it together. Besides, one person being rich doesn't count as being rich; only when everyone is rich does it count as being rich." Lu Zigan said.

In 2014, Lu Zijia and Lu Yulan from the same village asked Lu Zigan for help because of difficulties with funds, lambs and technology for raising goats. After learning about the situation, Lu Zigan immediately provided 20 lambs and helped contact relevant departments, obtaining interest-free loans of 30,000 yuan each, solving the practical problems of lambs, funds and others faced by Lu Zijia and Lu Yulan in raising stone goats. As for why he was willing to provide breeding goats to villagers and help solve problems such as technology and sales, Lu Zigan answered this way: "Mainly to help some villagers in difficulty avoid the funding and technical risks of raising goats and strive to escape poverty and become prosperous as soon as possible."

According to incomplete statistics, under Lu Zigan's influence and drive, more than 10 specialized stone goat farming households in the village, including Lu Yuemei, Chen Jierong and Kong Aiqing, developed one after another. Making a "goat fortune" by raising stone goats has become a good path for local villagers to start businesses and become prosperous.