Black-boned chickens leverage the Internet Plus to become golden chickens that bring wealth

At the beginning of this year, the semifinals of the first Meishan Youth E-commerce Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, themed "Youthful Meishan, Innovate to Win the Future" and hosted by the Communist Youth League Meishan Municipal Committee of Sichuan Province, came to a successful close. The project "Let the Free-Range Chickens Fly" by Wu Yongzhi, a young Party member from Zhongyan Village, Ruifeng Town, Qingshen County, advanced to the top ten. Wu Yongzhi is a somewhat blunt young man born in the 1980s whom everyone calls Xiao Wu. He has served in the military and worked as a chef. Time seems to flow by like water, yet he always felt something was missing from his youth. He was not content with a life of drifting from place to place and always wanted to return to the mountains where he was born and raised to build a career. After much thought and many setbacks, he embarked on a hard road of entrepreneurship, going from just a few dozen chickens at the start to more than ten thousand now. He sells free-range chickens and free-range eggs through WeChat and Taobao. Meishan Xiao Wu Free-Range Chickens has become a shining calling card of Qingshen e-commerce, and Wu Yongzhi has thus become a well-known e-commerce expert in the county, having been named one of Qingshen County's first "Top Ten Entrepreneurship Stars" and one of Meishan's "Good Rural Youths."

Raising free-range chickens "hatches" an entrepreneurial dream

While working away from home, he was bent on returning home to start a business, yet he agonized inwardly and asked himself: "What can I do back in the mountains?" After thinking day and night, he decided to just go home and start a business: raise chickens! Raising chickens was not a passing whim for him. During his time working as a chef elsewhere, he discovered that free-range chickens were hard to buy and in strong demand, making it a great business opportunity. Xiao Wu's hometown has pleasant scenery, few people, no pollution and open land. Its unique natural environment was the best guarantee for raising chickens that consumers could trust. There was no place more suitable for ecological farm-style breeding of black-boned chickens than that mountain with clear waters and green hills. In 2012, after careful consideration, Wu Yongzhi bravely told his family his idea, but he immediately faced opposition from the whole family. His parents kept saying that the family's circumstances were already poor, and that once there were losses, it would be an irreversible, huge loss for the whole family. Ignoring his family's opposition, he started from scratch with only 5,000 yuan and set out on a hard road of entrepreneurship.

Everything is difficult at the beginning. Raising chickens sounds easy, but doing it is hard. Right from the start, he worried about chicks. Purebred black-boned chickens were very hard to buy on the market, so he braved wind and rain and scorching sun, riding a broken-down motorcycle to farmers' homes in various places to find suitable chickens. Free-range farmers raised only small numbers and were unwilling to sell, so he bought them at high prices. Working away from home had long tempered Xiao Wu's firm conviction and perseverance. Day after day, he trudged unevenly along muddy roads, with mud on his shoes, trouser legs and even his clothes. Heaven rewards the diligent. By chance, Xiao Wu bought an incubator and hatched more than 1,000 free-range chicks, solving the problem of buying chicken stock.

He had the chicken stock, but other problems came one after another. Due to lack of experience, in 2013 more than half the chickens on the farm died, dealing Xiao Wu a heavy blow. Just then, Xiao Wu's father unfortunately fell from a tree and was seriously injured. His mother had been working in Chengdu and could not get away, and his younger brother was still in university, so his father could only be cared for by him. This made things even worse for Xiao Wu. With no way back from the situation before him, no difficulty, however great, could defeat Xiao Wu, who had served in the military. Xiao Wu was busy inside and out, repairing the chicken coop at home during the day and going to the city hospital at night to care for his father. He was exhausted every day and could fall asleep even while standing, but he still persisted and did not give up, facing things optimistically, and finally made it through this most difficult period.

Sales hit obstacles, WeChat "pries open" the market

In May 2012, Xiao Wu's free-range chickens began laying eggs and entered the peak laying period. Every day he had to collect more than one hundred eggs. Looking at the top-quality free-range eggs, Xiao Wu felt both joy and anxiety. What made him happy was that free-range egg production had risen; what made him anxious was that market sales had not yet opened up. Xiao Wu carried eggs to major restaurants and hotels to sell them, but the results were still poor. Xiao Wu could not help but reflect: could it really be that genuine free-range eggs could not be sold? "Absolutely impossible," Xiao Wu silently cheered himself on. "I believe that as long as the quality is good, the market will open up.

Raising free-range chickens alone in the mountains, young Xiao Wu felt somewhat lonely. When he had nothing to do, he would use his phone to take a few photos of feeding the free-range chickens and post them online via Weibo. Through Weibo, Xiao Wu met many friends. What he never expected was that this little hobby would actually help him open up the market.

In August 2012, a Ms. Yuan left Xiao Wu a message on Weibo, bringing him his first order. Through Ms. Yuan, Xiao Wu gained more than 20 steady customers on Weibo. Customers placed orders online, and then Wu Yongzhi used logistics and express delivery to send them to customers.

"Internet Plus" turns black-boned chickens into "golden chickens"

Through online sales channels such as Taobao, WeChat and QQ, Xiao Wu sold free-range chickens raised in Zhongyan Village to Chengdu, Shanghai and other places. The free-range chicken market was very tight, often with demand exceeding supply.

In 2015, the Qingshen County Party Committee and county government encouraged rural areas to build specialized, large-scale farms and vigorously develop the breeding industry, helping farmers escape poverty and become prosperous through industrial assistance. Wu Yongzhi went door to door to do work and personally invested a large amount of funds. He kept more than 8,000 chickens and led more than 200 impoverished households in 3 surrounding villages to raise chickens, with a total of more than 10,000. Wu Yongzhi strengthened standardized management of the production process, focused on technical training for impoverished households and strict screening of products, actively explored and formed a product traceability mechanism, ensured product quality, safeguarded the brand image and continuously improved operating efficiency.

Now, Wu Yongzhi is busy every day, busy inspecting and purchasing goods, busy guiding impoverished households on techniques and busy contacting customers. He is tired but happy. Wu Yongzhi used his youth and passion in exchange for his entrepreneurial dream, leading the impoverished households in his hometown out of poverty toward prosperity. At last, he has the chance to make it happen.