Xie Xiuwu is determined to be a good leader in becoming rich
In July 2009, Xie Xiuwu graduated from high school and went out to work like others his age. After working for some time, he thought that working for others was not as good as starting his own business and being his own boss. After careful consideration, he decided to return to his hometown to develop ecological chicken farming.
In May 2011, carrying 10,000 yuan saved from working, he began preparing for his business. He first went to Zhaobao Farm in Longyan, Fujian, to learn pheasant farming techniques. After three days of "one-on-one" instruction from a master, he gained a preliminary understanding of pheasant farming and immediately bought back 100 breeding chickens.
After returning home, Xie Xiuwu built a simple chicken coop himself and began raising chickens. However, due to lack of farming experience, these 100 breeding chickens died one after another, like ladle after ladle of cold water poured over him, chilling him to the bone. The first farming attempt failed.
Xie Xiuwu did not lose heart. After summing up the lessons of failure, he went to Tai'an, Shandong, and bought back 1,000 green-shelled laying hen chicks, deciding to start raising them from chicks. Unexpectedly, chicks were even harder to raise; after half a month, only a little over 100 survived. The second farming attempt also failed.
Watching the hard-earned money from working go down the drain one bill at a time, Xie Xiuwu was so anxious he kept scratching his head. He felt his farming techniques were still inadequate, so he went to Xiangyang and other places to learn, searched for relevant information online to study, and also invited county livestock technicians to provide on-site guidance. Finally, he mastered chick-raising techniques. He used all his remaining money to buy chicks, and through the method of "chickens lay eggs, eggs hatch chickens," he slowly expanded his farming scale.
Through market research, Xie Xiuwu found that free-range chickens and free-range eggs were very popular with consumers. So he decided to focus on ecological farming, registered and established Wulong Ecological Farm, and adopted completely traditional chicken-raising methods.
Xie Xiuwu contracted a piece of land in Anjia Township, planted corn and other grain crops in the field, and then built chicken coops at the edge of the field. During the day, he drove the chickens to his own field to range freely, and the feed he gave them was corn and other crops grown in the field. The chickens sold were authentic free-range chickens, and the eggs produced were genuine free-range eggs, which were very popular in the market.
Just when the ecological farming was developing smoothly, Xie Xiuwu encountered a setback. Last spring, the free-range eggs produced by Xie Xiuwu's chicken farm suddenly had no market, and more than 200 kg accumulated with no buyers. Why couldn't good products sell? After investigation, it turned out that after the Spring Festival, chicken farms everywhere began producing large quantities of eggs, which was the peak season for eggs on the market, so sales were naturally poor, while in autumn and winter egg production declined and the market became tight. After understanding the market situation, Xie Xiuwu thought: why not develop "off-season eggs," selling meat chickens in spring and summer and eggs in autumn and winter, achieving staggered market release
For chickens to lay eggs there are two conditions: one is reaching a certain temperature, and the other is long light exposure. In winter, to maintain the temperature of the chicken coop, Xie Xiuwu added windproof walls around the coop, spread rice husks and straw inside, and when the temperature was too low he placed fire pots inside the coop; to ensure light, he installed incandescent lamps in the coop, supplementing light from 18:00 to 20:00 every day and from 4:00 in the morning until dawn, so that the coop received no less than 16 hours of light per day; during the laying period, he timely fed the chickens some concentrated feed to supplement nutrition, and let the laying hens exercise more to help digestion and strengthen their bodies.
Xie Xiuwu's painstaking efforts brought returns. Last winter, his chicken farm produced nearly 300 kg of eggs per day, which sold well on the market. And by April and May, when the meat chicken market in various places was in short supply, he again brought his stocked meat chickens to market, and they were quickly snapped up.
In April this year, Xie Xiuwu transported a batch of pheasant chicks back from Xiangyang and began developing pheasant farming. At present, his chicken farm covers more than 2,000 sq m, with 3 standardized free-range chicken coops and 1 pheasant coop, with 3,500 laying hens, 1,500 roosters, and 1,000 pheasants on hand, and an annual output value of more than 700,000 yuan.
"As long as you are hardworking, you can build a big business in rural areas too." This is a saying Xie Xiuwu often says. In order to let his fellow villagers become rich together with him, he established Hongsheng Professional Breeding Cooperative, shifting from individual operation to cooperative operation, leading his fellow villagers to walk the road to prosperity through ecological chicken farming.