Raising chickens under the forest helps Li Ming achieve a double harvest
On January 4, at the Taohua Valley Family Farm in Shilong Village, Shilong Town, Jingshan County, Hubei Province, surrounded by mountains on all sides, the environment was quiet and serene. Under the trees covering the hillsides, flocks of free-range chickens were full of life, some leisurely searching for insects, others flapping their wings and chasing one another in play...
"At the beginning of the business, I wanted to proselytize forestry and get rich, so I planted landscaping seedlings and timber forests such as pine and Chinese fir, but I often faced the problem of weeding." said farm owner Li Ming. "Later I saw the family's free-range chickens eating insects in the woods, leaving the forest floor bare of grass, and the scattered chicken manure fertilized the trees, so I came up with the idea of raising chickens."
In 2013, Li Ming, who acted as soon as he decided, transferred 2,000 mu of forest land and began raising free-range chickens under the forest.
In order to improve the flavor and quality of the chicken, Li Ming's farm adopted the "553" model, that is, an average of 50 chickens per mu of forest land, with 500 chickens (occupying 10 mu) as one flock, and never using chemicals, hormones, or feed additives, letting the chickens feed mainly on insects, ants, earthworms and weeds, with self-mixed five-grain feed as a supplement, and drinking mountain spring water.
"Traditional chicken farming mostly uses confined rearing, and the chickens can be marketed in 45 days. The farm starts with chick rearing, and the chickens begin laying eggs after about 120 days, with the laying period lasting about 150 days; they are only sold after about 300 days of rearing. Using a cyclical farming method, while selling the previous batch of free-range chickens, we start raising the next batch of chicks." he said.
With high-quality products, there must also be sales channels. Li Ming is very quick-witted. In addition to traditional channels, he also sells through Taobao, WeChat Moments and many other ways. "During the 'Double 11' period in 2015, more than 2 million eggs were sold through e-commerce platforms." he told this writer. "To make consumers more confident about the quality of our products, the farm spent 38,000 yuan to set up a real-time monitoring system. Through the online platform, netizens can view the surveillance footage and learn about the growth status of the free-range chickens."
When asked about the income, Li Ming took out a calculator and carefully calculated the economics: "The farm has 30,000 chickens. On average, each chicken lays 70 eggs, and one egg is 0.75 yuan, so the total income from eggs is 1.575 million yuan. After the free-range chickens stop laying eggs, each chicken can produce an average of 3 jin of meat. Calculated at a market price of 18 yuan per jin, 30,000 chickens can produce 90,000 jin of chicken meat, with a revenue of 1.62 million yuan. After deducting the costs of chicks, corn, wheat, green feed and so on, the net profit of one free-range chicken raised under the forest reaches 50 yuan."
In fact, Li Ming also forgot to calculate his "timber account." The farm has more than 2,000 mu of pine and Chinese fir, as well as about 200 mu of economic seedlings such as Photinia × fraseri, southern magnolia, osmanthus, glossy privet and Chinese tulip tree, with economic benefits reaching 1 million yuan.