Sika deer farming helps farmers get rich

In Tanjiaqiao Town, Huangshan District, when the names Hu Caixia and Liu Laiyou come up, everyone gives a thumbs-up, praising them as an entrepreneurial couple and two skilled wealth creators.

Hu Caixia's home sits at the foot of Hemiao Mountain on the west side of the scenic Jianchuang Peak in Huangshan. This was originally barren hill land, but thanks to the couple's development of under-forest farming, a sika deer breeding base was built. Today, on the several-hundred-mu mountain area of Hemiao Mountain, peacocks roam through the woods, sika deer stroll beneath the trees, and hundreds of free-range chickens chase and play.

In 1988, Hu Caixia and her husband went to Tangkou Town at the south gate of Huangshan with 1500 yuan to work. Over more than ten years they accumulated some savings. In 2005 they returned home to start a business, going back to their hometown of Tanjiaqiao Town, where they opened a farmhouse-style local cuisine restaurant that kept growing steadily. In 2014 it received more than 90,000 tourist visits, with turnover of more than 3 million yuan.

Hu Caixia and her husband had a keen eye. They noticed that the mountain villages of Tanjiaqiao were rich in tourism resources but that these were not sufficiently developed. While taking part in a market survey organized by the district and town family planning associations, they discovered that raising sika deer in mountain villages had broad market prospects. Every part of the deer is treasured: deer antler velvet, deer blood and deer bone can be used as medicine, deer meat can be eaten, and deer hide can be processed into leather goods. So they invested more than 200,000 yuan, transferred 350 mu of mountain land at Hemiao Mountain, signed a 70-year contract, and obtained a special breeding license. In the spring of 2014, they invested another more than 300,000 yuan and purchased 56 breeding deer from a sika deer breeding base in Heilongjiang, building Huangshan City's largest sika deer breeding base.

The couple divided the work: the wife managed the farmhouse restaurant, and the husband devoted himself to raising the sika deer. Sika deer are highly wild by nature, and because of the large climate difference between north and south, they were initially not used to life there. To overcome the breeding difficulties, they invited experts from the provincial academy of agricultural sciences to provide on-site guidance and paid attention to strengthening disease prevention. After more than a year of breeding, the herd had grown to nearly a hundred deer, and in 2015 income from deer antler velvet alone reached more than 600,000 yuan. Deer are not suited to long-term pen raising, so after discussion the couple built a protective fence around Hemiao Mountain with a total length of 3600 m and a height of 3.5 m, letting the sika deer frolic in the wild. At the same time, they built hiking trails, orchards and a bonsai garden in the base so visitors could enjoy the mountain village's tourist scenery. The completion of the Hemiao Mountain ecological breeding park also boosted their family's farmhouse restaurant business. Today their farmhouse restaurant has become a designated reception site for the Shanghai Municipal Federation of Trade Unions and for Shanghai's old educated youth. In 2015 it received more than 110,000 tourist visits, with turnover exceeding 4.5 million yuan. Hu Caixia was also elected as one of Huangshan District's first model workers.