Xiao Chuanyou, a professional chicken farmer, leads the folks of Pingshan out of poverty toward prosperity

In the full swing of poverty alleviation work, more and more poor people are gradually shaking off poverty, and Xiao Chuanyou, a villager of Xinmin Village, Xin'an Town, Pingshan County, is one of them. As a newly registered poor household in the new round of registration, he has a particularly strong desire to escape poverty on his own initiative. Encouraged by the Party's policies for enriching the people, he relies on his own hardworking hands to continuously developentrepreneurial projects, continually opening up new paths to prosperity, and uses his own 800 mu of woodland to lead the villagers in vigorously developing the breeding industry.

Poverty spurs the desire for change

Chickens raised under the forest are in short supply

Group 4 of Xinmin Village, Xin'an Town, Pingshan County, can be called the "plateau" of Xin'an Town; describing the local production and living conditions as "barren mountains and treacherous waters" would not be an exaggeration. The 11 km of road from Xinmin Village to the Xin'an Town seat is all steep slopes, the per capita paddy field in the group is less than 0.5 mu, and most of it is "rain-fed land." Faced with few fields, sparse forest and poor people, Xiao Chuanyou once felt he had no place to use his abilities, and his own circumstances did not allow him to go out to work.

"Is going out to work really the only way out for us?" Watching the mountain village remain unchanged for decades while the world beyond the mountains changed with each passing day, Xiao Chuanyou kept asking himself this. He firmly believed that with his own intelligence and hardworking hands, he could surely carve out a path to prosperity of his own.

Everything is hard at the beginning. In 2014, after half a year of market research and in light of national policies, Xiao Chuanyou found that the business of raising chickens under the forest was a path more suited to his development, and he also had several hundred mu of woodland he could use.

Once he set his sights on the chicken-raising industry, he acted at once. In the second half of 2014, Xiao Chuanyou took out less than 10,000 yuan in savings, borrowed 50,000 yuan from a credit union and 100,000 yuan from relatives to build chicken coops. After the coops were built, based on his market investigations, Xiao Chuanyou borrowed money to buy 3,000 chicks.

What to do without technical skills? Xiao Chuanyou bought books on chicken-raising techniques, taught himself via mobile internet, learned from other large chicken farmers, and groped for experience, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the chicken farm. He asked comrades from the animal husbandry station and technicians from other chicken farms to teach him how to give injections to chickens. To learn how to give injections, he ruined countless syringes. By teaching himself to judge the illnesses of chickens, Xiao Chuanyou accumulated a great deal of chicken-raising experience through constant exploration.

Now, with the strong support of relatives and friends, Xiao Chuanyou buys a batch of chicks to raise each month. He established the Pingshan County Xinsheng Native Chicken Breeding Farmers' Professional Cooperative, and in cooperation with several breeding companies, invested 1 million yuan to build a chicken farm covering 80 mu, with 6 chicken coops and an annual output of 30,000 birds, making him the leading large-scale farmer in the village. He captures the market with the meat quality of his native chickens. His chickens are not only of a good breed but also raised at a high level, mainly fed with grain, vegetable leaves and green grass; the chicken meat is good in quality and high in nutritional value, and the market prospects are very promising. Now he not only holds the local market, but even out-of-town operators come to him on their own initiative to discuss business. Today, his native chickens have long been in short supply, and he has initially achieved order-based farming.

When drinking water, remember its source

Becoming prosperous without forgetting to help the masses

In Xiao Chuanyou's view, leading the whole village to become prosperous together is his ultimate goal. Quite a few families in the village are still in poverty and still hesitating on the road of poverty; he sees all this and worries anxiously. He firmly believes that poor households will certainly face many difficulties in escaping poverty, but as long as they emancipate their minds and change their thinking, there will always be more solutions than difficulties. If the villagers are also to escape poverty and become prosperous through science and technology and find a new path, the key is still to rely on science and on technology, for only in this way can their income be increased.

Xiao Chuanyou organized some villagers to raise chickens together and established a farmers' professional cooperative. He said: "In the past, raising chickens was just a traditional activity, only for one's own use, but in recent years, under the adjustment of the market economy, farmers raising chickens is not only to meet their own needs; most importantly, it can raise farmers' economic income through market transactions. Only in this way will farmers' lives get better day by day."

Thinking and action proceeded in tandem. Xiao Chuanyou invited comrades from units such as the county and township agricultural technology stations and animal husbandry stations to come to the village and give farmers training on how to do a good job in breeding and planting and other agricultural science and technology knowledge, and he further mastered practical rural breeding techniques such as chicken raising.

Under Xiao Chuanyou's leadership, many poor people in Xinmin Village who had been sitting on the fence have taken action. Today, more than 30 poor households in the village have begun raising chickens together with him, jointly carving out a road to prosperity deep in the mountains.