Chicken Commander Makes a Fortune with Ecological Chicken Farming
Recently, our reporter walked into the laying hen farm set up by Huang Fuchang in Daodong Village, Shatian Town, Pinggui Management District. The first thing that greeted the eye was white laying hens pecking leisurely under a grove of osmanthus trees, some playing, some resting, looking truly adorable.
Huang Fuchang, who had just returned after driving his small car to deliver eggs to the city, left the reporter with a first impression of being refined, steady, shy and full of energy. According to him, loading native eggs into his car and taking them to the city to sell before 10 o'clock every day has become his daily routine, and it is also the happiest "income" period of his day. He told the reporter that his eggs are often booked in "childhood betrothals" - usually before the eggs are even laid, customers have already placed orders in advance. They are sold not only at the Shatian Town market and to primary and secondary schools, but also to the Hezhou City farmers' market and surrounding cities and counties (districts). This is mainly thanks to his posting information on WeChat Moments and the fact that all his chicken feed is made from green ingredients such as corn, soybean meal and wheat bran.
Huang Fuchang studied landscape architecture in university. In February last year, he gave up a generous salary at a company in Dongguan, Guangdong, and returned to his hometown to start a business together with his newlywed wife. He told the reporter that his choice to return home and start a business was entirely out of filial piety toward his parents and a desire to give back to his hometown. Starting a business back home allows him both to be with his parents and to drive the local economic development.
What to do after returning home was actually something Huang Fuchang had not thought through clearly. "Better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix." This is a saying he often repeats. After inspecting many places, he found that ecological eggs have high nutritional value and particularly good returns, and that they fit the trend of modern people pursuing a healthy lifestyle. Moreover, there are very few farms in Pinggui Management District, or even in Hezhou City, that raise ecological laying hens professionally and on a large scale. After some deliberation, he decided to use his meager savings from two years of working away from home, plus his parents' savings of many years, to invest more than 100,000 yuan in setting up a farm and became a "Chicken Commander."
To solve problems such as breeding technology and sales, Huang Fuchang attended laying hen breeding technology training and online training many times, strengthening his learning and exchanges, and finally blazed a successful trail of "Internet Plus" modern agricultural ecological farming. At present, his laying hen farm has more than 1,000 laying hens in stock, producing about 700 eggs a day. Calculated at the current market price of eggs, he earns 700 yuan a day from eggs alone, and his annual income is expected to reach 200,000 yuan.
Huang Fuchang not only set up an ecological laying hen farm and an osmanthus tree plantation, but also founded a steel structure and colored tile company. Today, influenced by his success in returning home to start a business, university graduates from Pinggui Management District who succeeded in business elsewhere have also come home one after another to invest, covering industries such as Chinese patent medicine, tea and fruit and vegetable cultivation, special livestock and poultry breeding, ecological tourism development and food processing, driving the development of modern agriculture and ecological rural tourism. Last year, the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries in the whole management district reached 3.07 billion yuan, up 8.5% year on year; it received 2.922 million tourist visits and total tourism revenue of 3.003 billion yuan, up 15.96% and 23.07% respectively year on year.
Looking to the future, Huang Fuchang is full of confidence. He said he wants to make the forest-grown ecological native eggs a trump card, apply for a registered trademark, and print the words "Xiaoliang River Native Eggs" on the packaging boxes. At the same time, he will join hands with university graduates who have returned home to start businesses to expand and strengthen the forest industry and building materials industry through land transfer, and lead villagers in developing orchard rural tourism, so that more villagers can find jobs and start businesses at their doorstep and achieve moderate prosperity in step with the rest of the country as soon as possible.