Deer Farmer Wang Chunjie Shares His Experience of Getting Rich
Pushing open the door and walking into the courtyard of the breeding farm, dozens of sika deer in the pens, hearing the sound and looking wary, all turned their eyes toward the reporter. Word had long been circulating that Wang Chunjie, a farmer from Yanjiabaozi Village, Zhangxiang Town, Qinghe District, raised deer on quite a large scale, and indeed the reputation was well deserved.
In the eyes of the people around him, Wang Chunjie was once a man who "neglected his proper work," because as early as 14 years ago, he was unwilling to settle down to farming the land honestly. With no successful precedent in the local area, and at the risk of losing all his savings, he scraped money together from here and there to buy and raise deer. In the eyes of even more people, Wang Chunjie is a man who dares to think and dares to act; once he set his mind on sika deer, he devoted himself quietly to the business for more than 10 years and carved out a path to wealth that others envied, which earned him the nickname "Deer Herder" among his fellow villagers.
Learning that the reporter had come specially to interview him about sika deer breeding, Wang Chunjie, who came out to the doorway to welcome him, started talking before even entering the house, showing his fondness for sika deer in every word: "On the whole, sika deer are fairly easy to raise. They are not only gentle in temperament, but also eat any green feed they see and are not picky at all. In winter, feeding them some corn, soybean cake, wheat bran and straw is enough. More importantly, sika deer have strong disease resistance; as long as you raise them scientifically and pay attention to sanitation and epidemic prevention, they rarely get sick. Only when cutting velvet antler and delivering fawns for the does do you need to take special care."
When it came to the income from raising deer, Wang Chunjie did not hold anything back and kept talking freely: a male sika deer can live up to 45 years. Apart from the three-year growth period, it can produce velvet antler for 42 years, selling for about 8,000 yuan each year. Sika deer that do not produce velvet antler can be slaughtered for meat, and deer whip, deer placenta, deer sinew and deer blood fetch even higher prices. Calculated this way, a single sika deer can generate a total profit of around 200,000 yuan.
The reporter at his side could not help doing some calculating too. Wang Chunjie's breeding farm has 68 sika deer on hand, including 24 does that have given birth, 8 fawns, and 36 adult stags, bringing in truly considerable economic returns each year.
"I do like the title 'Deer Herder' that everyone has given me, but I also have bigger ambitions." Facing the reporter, Wang Chunjie said, "I not only want to further expand my own breeding scale, but I am also willing to offer help to other farmers and drive more people to raise sika deer and get rich together. By then, everyone should call me 'Head Deer Herder.'"