The business opportunity of raising geese came from a chat with a friend

Over the past year, Li Yuexi was extremely busy, and even around the 28th or 29th of the twelfth lunar month, his phone kept ringing nonstop. He said: "Most of these calls are from customers in the south, asking whether we have goose eggs or goose meat at home?"

In the winter of 2014, this former laid-off worker from a flour mill in Jiyang County, who can now be called a "farm owner"raising geeselarge-scale farmer, discovered a business opportunity from chatting with a friend, then after field visits and inspections began raising geese, and now after more than a year of exploration, he has gradually gotten on the right track.

A friend asked about goose eggs, and he saw a business opportunity

    "Do you know who around here sells goose eggs?" One day in 2014, Li Yuexi, who had just stepped out his front door, was grabbed by a friend. The friend said he had heard goose eggs are highly nutritious and wanted to buy some for his child to eat.

Li Yuexi said that he usually had some "connections," and because he knew a lot, most villagers came to ask him when they had questions. However, this question from his friend stumped him.

"Thinking carefully, it seems there really isn't anyone around selling goose eggs." At that moment, an idea suddenly popped into Li Yuexi's mind: "Since there is demand, why not raise them myself?"raise geese。”

After this idea popped up, Li Yuexi went online to look up related information, and after learning that goose eggs and goose meat both have very high nutritional value, he became even more convinced of his idea.

Li Yuexi said that after learning this, he traveled all over Jiyang looking for farmers who raised geese, but unfortunately, most of these people had already switched to other work. But from these former breeders, he found that they had all suffered heavy losses because of raising geese.

"A few years ago, public awareness was not there yet, and goose meat was even cheaper than chicken, so of course goose farmers lost money. But in recent years, the price of goose meat has been significantly higher than chicken." Li Yuexi said that after his visits, he found that the path of getting rich by raising geese was now completely viable.

It took several places to gather a thousand goslings

Jiyang, Shanghe, Zhangqiu, Leling... In the period that followed, in order to find good goslings, Li Yuexi traveled to nearly all of Shandong Province. Every place he went, he asked where there were large-scale goose farmers.

He said that a large-scale goose farmer in Shanghe had once warned him that, to avoid being cheated, it was best to buy goose eggs and an incubator himself and hatch the goslings personally.

Following the advice of this large-scale goose farmer, he bought an incubator capable of hatching more than a thousand goslings at a time and prepared to hatch them himself. However, a problem arose: where to buy goose eggs?

Based on his earlier visits, he found that buying more than 1,000 goose eggs from one place would be somewhat difficult. "In the end, I bought more than 700 from Shanghe and more than 200 from Jiyang."

Success! Not only did the goslings hatch, he also experimentally hatched peacocks

The incubator was bought, the goose eggs were gathered, and all that was left was hatching the goslings. Facts proved that Li Yuexi was lucky, because he succeeded on the first try.

Li Yuexi said that before incubating, he had no confidence either, and completely followed the steps introduced online, setting the incubator parameters and proceeding step by step; fortunately, it ultimately succeeded.

After that, within a month, the goslings slowly grew. Later, considering future development, Li Yuexi bought another incubator capable of hatching 3,000 goslings at a time.

Watching the goslings grow day by day, Li Yuexi had a new idea. "Nearly 100 mu of open land, with only geese, is a bit monotonous." He thought of buying a few peacock eggs and hatching peacocks.

As soon as this idea popped up, Li Yuexi became somewhat impatient and soon put it into action. Later, he bought 10 peacock eggs from the south and tried hatching them with an incubator.

"Out of 10 peacock eggs, 7 peachicks hatched." Li Yuexi was still quite satisfied with the experimental result. But before the excitement faded, the peacocks died one by one.

Speaking of this, Li Yuexi felt somewhat regretful. "At first we did not know what peacocks eat, so we fed them fish and meat; who knew they all starved to death one by one." He said that in the end, after checking information, he learned that this kind of peacock eats insects when young.

Eggs and meat mostly go "south"; northern residents have low acceptance

On the day of the interview, only 1 of the 7 peacocks Li Yuexi had hatched remained. Together with a large flock of geese, the peacock seemed somewhat out of place. When someone approached, it hid under a vehicle and was unwilling to come out. Li Yuexi said that now that the peacock has grown up, it forages for food on its own.

At Li Yuexi's farm, the reporter saw that the outer perimeter of the farm was a manually dug ditch, and flocks of geese occasionally went into the water together. On the farm, many geese walked back and forth in the woodland, and a north-south water trough ran through the entire forest farm.

The reporter learned that at present, Li Yuexi's farm has close to 10,000 geese, and these geese can lay more than 1,000 goose eggs a day. Although there is currently no worry about sales, Li Yuexi said that most of the eggs and meat are "snapped up" by customers from the south.

He said that goose meat and goose eggs contain rich nutritional components, but judging from the current situation, southern residents are relatively more "discerning," while northern residents' acceptance is relatively lower.