Large Rex Rabbit Farmer in Yuexi, Anhui, Leads Villagers Out of Poverty Toward Prosperity
Cheng Shudan, who lives in Hexi Village, Dianqian Town, Yuexi County, Anqing City, was once a poor household in the village. In 2013, he escaped poverty by raising Rex rabbits. Today he is the town's large Rex rabbit farmer and has also established the Hefan Rex Rabbit Breeding Professional Cooperative. Over the years, while building his own prosperity, he has not forgotten to help the village's poor households escape poverty. By 2015, he had already motivated more than 60 village households to raise Rex rabbits, 30 of which were poor households, and many had already escaped poverty as a result. This year, he plans to motivate another 60 poor households to develop Rex rabbit breeding, so that all the poor households in the village can escape poverty.
On March 3, the reporter walked into Cheng Shudan's Rex rabbit breeding farm and saw neat rows of rabbit houses at the entrance. Each rabbit cage held one Rex rabbit, and the environment was clean and tidy. The Rex rabbits had blood-red eyes, long straight ears, and pure white fur, and stayed very quietly in their cages.
"In 2010 there were only two rows of rabbit houses here. I started raising them from 68 breeding rabbits. Now there are 5 rabbit houses, and 12,000 commercial rabbits can be produced a year, with an annual output value of 700,000 to 800,000 yuan," Cheng Shudan said. Previously, some people in the village also raised meat rabbits, but the returns had always been poor. When he was working away from home, he once happened to see Rex rabbits in a magazine and became very interested in them. Later he made a special trip to Jiangsu to inspect a Rex rabbit breeding base. He found that Rex rabbits could not only make money from their fur but their meat could also be eaten, so they were certainly more profitable than raising meat rabbits. Therefore he returned home and began raising Rex rabbits.
In 2010, after studying and training at the rabbit farm of the Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Cheng Shudan returned to his hometown of Hexi Village, built a Rex rabbit breeding farm, and established the Hefan Rex Rabbit Breeding Professional Cooperative. At that time, he introduced 68 breeding rabbits from the Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences. That year, 880 breeding rabbits were bred and raised, and by September 2011 he had sold more than 5,000 commercial rabbits, developed 11 farming households, and made a profit of more than 200,000 yuan.
By 2013, the Hefan Rex Rabbit Breeding Professional Cooperative had developed 800 breeding female rabbits, motivated more than 30 farming households across the county and in neighboring counties, and had an annual output of 24,000 commercial rabbits. Cheng Shudan said that as the scale of Rex rabbit breeding expanded, in order to obtain higher returns, the cooperative decided to carry out deep processing of rabbit meat. In August 2013, the cooperative separately registered and established Anhui Hefan Ecological Agriculture Development Co., Ltd., built a 500 sq m standardized rabbit meat processing plant with an annual processing capacity of 500 tons of rabbit meat, increasing the income from each commercial rabbit by 20 yuan. "For the processed rabbit meat, the wholesale price is more than 30 yuan per jin, and Rex rabbit fur is 30 yuan per pelt. Calculating now, one Rex rabbit can sell for more than 90 yuan," Cheng Shudan said.
Today, in Hexi Village, Rex rabbit breeding has become a poverty alleviation project. For poor households raising Rex rabbits, the government provides a 2,000 yuan subsidy. In August 2015, Cheng Xiaozhen, a poor household in Hexi Village, bought 36 breeding rabbits to raise at home at a cost of more than 4,000 yuan. By the twelfth lunar month he had sold more than 100 commercial rabbits, earning five or six thousand yuan. Now there are still more than 120 rabbits in his rabbit house. Cheng Xiaozhen said that previously he mainly relied on silkworm rearing at home, which was hard and exhausting and still did not earn much money. A family of 6 had an annual income of only 10,000 to 20,000 yuan. Now raising rabbits is not only much easier, but the income is also higher.