Nanyang Zhenping poultry farmer's 8-year journey from 10,000 yuan to 1 million yuan

Zhang Qingcai busies himself all day long in the chicken farm

Eight years ago, he ended his days as a migrant worker and invested 10,000 yuan to start raising chickens;

Over those 8 years, he took one step at a time, focusing on raising chickens. He had his joys, but more often than not it was hardship beyond words;

In the end, he managed to grow a chicken farm that started with an investment of only 10,000 yuan into today's 1 million yuan breeding operation...

He is Zhang Qingcai of Lijiazhuang Village, Laozhuang Town, Zhenping County.

In 2002, after more than 2 years at a vocational high school, 22-year-old Zhang Qingcai boarded a train heading south and became a migrant worker.

From team leader to workshop director, and then to deputy factory manager in charge of production, Zhang Qingcai worked for nearly 6 years and could be said to have done remarkably well.

But deep down he always felt that working as a migrant worker was not a long-term solution, so while serving as deputy factory manager, Zhang Qingcai resolutely quit his job in 2007 and returned to his hometown.

After marrying and starting a family in his hometown, he had only a mere 10,000 yuan in savings left. Zhang Qingcai thought it over and over and felt that using what he had learned to raise chickens was relatively more reliable.

He acted as soon as he decided. In 2008, Zhang Qingcai designed and personally built his first simple chicken coop, starting out with 1,000 chickens. At the time his idea was very simple: as long as he could support his family. People are often like this: once they get started, they want to expand the scale, and Zhang Qingcai was no exception.

In 2009, 2,000 chickens; in 2010, 3,000 chickens...

Just when Zhang Qingcai was full of ambition and ready to go all out, he ran into the huge losses in chicken farming in 2010. Helpless, he handed the family operation over to his parents and wife to manage, and he himself was hired by a large chicken farm in Hunan, using the money he earned to subsidize the family chicken farm. That time away from home lasted two years.

What made Zhang Qingcai very gratified was that during these two years he not only earned a good deal of money, but more importantly, it happened to coincide with the sharp plunge in steel prices in 2012. He seized this favorable opportunity and, using the expertise he had learned earlier while working in Guangzhou, designed and personally welded a large shed with a breeding scale of 6,000 chickens.

During the dog days of summer, in order to meet the construction schedule, while Zhang Qingcai was welding, the scorching welding sparks burned the skin off his hands and chest. The large shed was finally completed at the end of 2012. In July 2013, the shed was full of chicks. This time, Zhang Qingcai caught the great opportunity of 2014, and this one shed of chicks alone brought him a net income of 300,000 yuan that year.

For those in the production business, funding shortages are common. Sometimes, in order to buy corn, Zhang Qingcai often had to drive a three-wheeler to several townships to purchase corn. After bringing the corn back, he still had to stay up late mixing and grinding it into feed.

In this way, Zhang Qingcai led the whole family into the effort, and over 8 years built a chicken farm worth 1 million yuan with an annual stock of 13,000 chickens. Not only that, he also provided technical help free of charge, helping several neighboring households get rich by raising chickens.

Talking about these years of development, Zhang Qingcai said with emotion that he was a farmer's child, and enduring some hardship and fatigue was nothing, but the biggest difficulty was that in the breeding industry, getting a loan was too hard, and during the development process he was often short of funds.

Hearing this, Wang Zhongcen, the village Party branch secretary who accompanied the reporter on the interview, said that the village had already established a fruit and forestry cooperative last year. Next, the village would vigorously plant economic forests such as golden pears and chestnuts. After Zhang Qingcai joined the cooperative, with the overall advancement of the fruit and forestry industry, not only could the problem of harmless treatment of chicken manure be effectively solved, but more importantly, through the cooperative guarantee model, the problem of his shortage of development funds could be effectively solved.

Inspiration from entrepreneurial success

Lijiazhuang Village, Laozhuang Town, Zhenping County, is a provincial key village for poverty alleviation and development. If more entrepreneurial models like Zhang Qingcai could emerge in the village, the village's overall poverty alleviation would certainly be greatly accelerated.

Zhang Qingcai's ability to succeed in entrepreneurship was by no means accidental.

Although Zhang Qingcai, born in 1980, like the vast majority of rural children, also had the experience of working away from home. What made Zhang Qingcai different from others was that before going out to work, he had studied livestock and poultry breeding at the county vocational high school for nearly 3 years, and it was precisely this difference that made his success today.

It can be seen that to succeed in entrepreneurship, one needs to be familiar with the professional knowledge of the venture.

Entrepreneurship also requires firm belief. Throughout his entire entrepreneurial process, no matter how hard or difficult it was, no matter how great the setbacks he encountered, Zhang Qingcai remained firm in his belief and never spoke of giving up.