Layer-breeding hens in Songyuan help farmers onto the road to prosperity
Inside the fully enclosed chicken house, tens of thousands of laying hens are feeding. In this fully enclosed chicken house, temperature, humidity, light and feeding are all strictly regulated. For feeding and watering, the keeper only needs to press a button outside; outsiders are strictly forbidden to enter the chicken house.
This mechanised farm is located in Changfa Village, Xin'an Town, Changling County. Farm manager Zhao Xianzhong has completed the leap from the earliest free-range laying hens to today's large-scale farming. After years of hard work and tempering, Zhao Xianzhong expanded his original farm of a few hundred laying hens step by step by the snowball method, developing it into today's modern farm of tens of thousands of chickens, and he has also worked out and summed up his own "recipe for wealth".
Borrowing money to build chicken houses, forging a road to prosperity
Zhao Xianzhong is a genuine farmer from Xin'an Town, who had always been busy making a living in the fields. Many years ago, he saw farmers from other places getting rich through layer breeding, so he visited layer breeders in other places to seek experience and techniques in layer breeding. He secretly made up his mind and set out on this road to prosperity through layer breeding. At that time, Zhao Xianzhong's family did not have enough funds, so he went around to relatives' homes and scraped together several tens of thousands of yuan. He built a small chicken house, and used the rest of the money to buy chicks, materials on layer-breeding techniques, feed and disease-prevention medicines. Zhao Xianzhong worked from dawn to dusk, feeding the chickens, cleaning the chicken house regularly, and giving medicine to sick chickens, while studying breeding techniques assiduously as he raised the chickens.
A few years ago, the market price of eggs fell sharply, and over the year Zhao Xianzhong lost nearly a million yuan. This dealt a considerable blow to the farm, but Zhao Xianzhong never thought of giving up and gritted his teeth to persevere. Last year, the farm welcomed new vitality. After several rounds of investigation, Zhao Xianzhong decided to build fully enclosed chicken houses and adopt modern breeding techniques. The farm chose a new site and built two chicken houses, able to accommodate more than twenty thousand laying hens. As the farming scale expanded, the sales channels opened up. Before the eggs even leave the house, wholesalers come to collect the goods, which are sold all over the country. The farm is now on the right track, but Zhao Xianzhong does not dare to relax. Every day he works from dawn to dusk, carefully observing the chickens' growth, feed intake and egg production, as well as the temperature and humidity of the rearing environment, and keeping careful records. Step by step, he builds his business steadily.
Expanding the scale, leading fellow villagers onto the road to prosperity
"Getting rich alone does not count as getting rich; we must lead the farmers onto the road to prosperity." This is a saying Zhao Xianzhong often keeps on his lips. The second-phase expansion of the farm is already in his plans, and his goal is to reach a breeding scale of seventy thousand laying hens.
It is expected that next year, more fully enclosed chicken houses will be put into use. Zhao Xianzhong says he wants to lead the surrounding villagers to get rich together by raising laying hens, providing the new chicken houses for the villagers to use and offering technical guidance. Whichever household among the surrounding villagers wants to take the road to wealth through chicken farming can come to his home to learn, and he will teach them hand in hand and explain patiently and in detail.