One emu egg sells for 180 yuan; a young man from Yong'an, Sanming, got rich raising emus

In winter, the emus of Yong'an Jianzhou Poultry Co., Ltd. enter their peak laying period. Each egg weighs 0.5-0.7 kg and sells for 180 yuan. More than 100 eggs have been sold this laying season, earning a tidy sum for Chen Yuezhou, who has persisted for 8 years in raising emus in a mountain hollow in Jian Village, Xiaotao Town, Yong'an City.

Chen Yuezhou is the general manager of Jianzhou Poultry Co., Ltd. He graduated from Nanjing Agricultural University in 2004 with a degree in Food Science and Engineering. In 2007 he resigned and returned to his hometown to raise emus. Over eight years of entrepreneurship, he has won the title of "Fujian Province Youth May Fourth Medal Pacesetter" and National Rural Youth Wealth-Building Leader, and also represented Fujian at the conference celebrating the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Youth League held in Beijing.

At present the company raises a total of 224 adult emus. Although it is winter, the emus stroll and run leisurely around the farm. "Emus are not afraid of cold, and raising them is extensive; they eat two meals a day and mainly feed on grass," Chen Yuezhou said.

These 224 emus are already 7 years old, and two-thirds are female emus. A female emu lays no more than 20 eggs a year. The emu laying period runs from October each year to April of the following year, and entering December counts as the peak period, when the farm can harvest more than 10 emu eggs a day. Since October, the emus have laid more than 500 eggs, of which more than 100 have been bought by traders. Chen Yuezhou mainly uses the remaining more than 300 emu eggs for hatching so as to expand the scale. Starting in 2012, he adopted the "company + base + farmer" model, selling the hatched emu chicks to farmers inside and outside the province who are interested in raising them, then buying them back for rough processing of emus.

The emu eggshell is dark green. Many customers buy them for collection, and some process the shells into artworks, so Chen Yuezhou packs two eggs into a gift box for customers' convenience. Another portion is mainly supplied to hotels for catering. Emu egg liquid is rich in collagen and various trace elements, and is a purely natural nutritional and beauty product, very popular among people. Emu meat is also very valuable. In 2013, Chen Yuezhou invested more than 600,000 yuan to build a slaughtering and processing workshop and also built a freezer. He cuts emu meat into 18 varieties for sale; emu meat sells for 140 yuan per kg, and emu feet for more than 200 yuan each. He also cooperated with a university to develop emu oil extraction equipment, and the extracted emu oil can sell for more than 600 yuan per kg. This year Jianzhou Company reached a scale of processing more than 500 head annually, with each head selling for about 3,000 yuan. From this alone, annual sales reach over a million yuan.