Wen Yamei Works Her Way Out of Poverty to Prosperity

2 chicken farms, 30,000 chickens, fixed assets of more than 4 million yuan, annual profit of more than 500,000 yuan... Behind these figures is Wen Yamei's arduous entrepreneurial history. As an ordinary rural woman from Houbaijiagou Village, Yihe Town, Suide County, she was not overshadowed by poverty, but chose to carve out a road to prosperity through hard entrepreneurship. Today she is a well-known large-scale chicken farmer near and far, having carved out a new world of her own in laying hen breeding. Being rich personally does not count as being rich; with the people in her heart, she established a chicken farming professional cooperative in 2010, leading and helping neighboring villagers onto the road to prosperity together.

Following the Trend of the Times - Starting a Chicken Farm Through Independent Entrepreneurship

In early 1996, amid the vigorous tide of the market economy, Wen Yamei and her husband Liu Yali, after careful investigation, decided to build their own chicken farm and change their fate of poverty. The two, who acted as soon as they decided, raised more than 150,000 yuan with many relatives and friends and built a chicken farm, and brought back the first batch of more than 3,000 chicks from Shanxi Province. "From the first day we brought the chicks back, we revolved around the chicks 24 hours a day, boiling water, mixing medicine, preparing feed, and vaccinating them, cleaning and disinfecting feed buckets and water buckets, clearing manure, and so on, not daring to be the least bit careless," Wen Yamei recalled. At that time, they were full of drive and were never afraid of hardship. Every step was carried out strictly according to the chick-raising procedures, and the hardship involved can well be imagined, especially in the hotter chicken house, personally giving each chick nasal drops until they were exhausted.

During this period, Wen Yamei's husband Liu Yali went out to study chicken farming techniques for more than a month, but problems still kept arising, far from meeting the needs of the entire breeding management. For this reason, they often ran to bookstores and libraries, bought books and looked up materials, visited other people's farms to study, and gradually accumulated breeding experience. More than a year of arduous effort finally paid off. An income of tens of thousands of yuan made the couple ecstatic, and they clutched it in their hands and counted it over and over again. "The joy gained from this first venture is indescribable, and it filled us with confidence in the chicken farming business," Wen Yamei said happily.

Not Giving Up in Decline - Accumulating Experience and Establishing a Company

In 1998, just when the breeding business was thriving, due to lack of experience, more than 5,000 laying hens at the chicken farm that had just reached peak egg production fell ill or died, and in the end fewer than 3,000 laying hens were culled at 5 yuan each. Everything was lost, with a loss of more than 130,000 yuan. The shattering of hope did not frighten Wen Yamei. She always held firmly to her belief, seeking help from relatives and friends everywhere to raise funds, insisting on keeping the chicken farm going.

In early 2004, Wen Yamei went to Shanxi, Hebei, Xi'an and other places to investigate, consult experts, visit specialists, and tour large-scale farms. She learned that the national inventory of laying hens had dropped sharply, and she judged that this was a good opportunity and decided to expand the scale. She rented 42 mu of land and expanded the chicken farm into a large-scale breeding farm with automatic feeding, automatic drinking, and automatic manure cleaning, and from then on ushered in a golden period of development.

In 2008, Wen Yamei registered and established Suide County Lvxin Livestock and Poultry Breeding Co., Ltd., which now owns two trademarks, "Suide Han" and "Qianshi Bridge." In addition to being sold in the county, fresh eggs are also sold far away to Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Yan'an, Yanchang and other provinces, cities and counties, forming a good reputation among consumers.

Establishing a Cooperative - Leading Fellow Villagers to Prosper Together

In 2010, relying on the company's development, Wen Yamei established the Suide Han Chicken Farming Professional Cooperative and served as its legal representative and chairman. The cooperative adopts the joint development model of "cooperative + company + association + base + farmers," providing farmers with services such as the purchase of production materials and unified packaging, sales, transportation, and storage of products, gradually forming an industrial chain integrating production, supply, and sales, driving and helping more than 360 neighboring households, and supporting and cultivating 20 chicken farming households with more than 1,000 chickens, mainly distributed in Yihe, Zhongjiao, Jizhen, Mantangchuan, Xuejiahe and other townships.

In order to solve the worries of fellow villagers, Wen Yamei provides free pre-sale and after-sale technical services for farmers, teaching them hand by hand immunization techniques such as eye drops, nasal drops, oral drops, beak trimming, injections, and wing web vaccination for chicks, passing on breeding experience and techniques to them, and providing various kinds of breeding information. "Now the scale of these assisted farming households is also constantly expanding, and their living standards are constantly improving. There are 6 households with more than 4,000 chickens," Wen Yamei said happily. Today, she provides more than 370 tons of eggs to the market every year, letting more people eat high-quality, trustworthy eggs.