Native chicken farming helps farmers get rich

Led by Huang Yuping, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Municipal Supply and Marketing Cooperative, the village assistance working group of Shipan Village visited the home of Ren Rongguang in Group 4 of the village to learn about his chicken farming situation. According to Ren Rongguang, with the support of the Municipal Supply and Marketing Cooperative and the village assistance working group, he began raising 200 native chickens in September this year. Each one now weighs five or six jin, and in another month they will be ready for market. After deducting feed and other costs, the expected net income per chicken can reach 15 yuan. When all these chickens are sold, the net income can reach about 3,000 yuan. If he raises 3 rounds a year, the net income can reach over 10,000 yuan. Seeing the native chickens running under the forest, everyone felt that nearly 3 months of poverty alleviation work had finally produced some small results.

Recalling when he first arrived in Shipan Village, through visits he learned the main reasons for the village's poverty, namely plenty of forest and little land, a relatively large number of young and middle-aged people going out to work, and those left behind in the village being mostly the elderly, women and children. Not a single household in the whole village was a large planting or breeding household, let alone a farmers' professional cooperative. At the same time, in recent years, although the village "two committees" had kept up development around the "Mabian River-Muxi River 300,000-mu high-quality tea industry belt" without relaxing their efforts, and had newly planted more than 400 mu of tea trees in the village, the money earned by ordinary people was still not much.

Around the topic of how to develop the economy under the forest and give ordinary people a certain income, the working group conducted many in-depth investigations and found that the village's geographical environment and conditions were suitable for large-scale chicken farming. However, judging from past farming situations, when the scale was 10-20 chickens, the survival rate was not high. The main reasons were that when the farming scale was not large, farmers were unwilling to invest too much energy, and in the early stage of raising chicks, they did not pay attention to scientific management and were unwilling to buy special feed for chickens, instead using pig feed or corn directly, resulting in a relatively high disease and mortality rate. When the farming scale was above 500 chickens, most ordinary households could not reach that level in terms of funds and energy, and everyone preferred livestock and poultry with a short farming cycle, high survival rate and broad market sales channels. In response, the working group organized and carried out the development idea of using small-scale demonstration farming households to drive the development of the whole village's farming industry: first, select 3 poor households with farming conditions and enthusiasm as demonstration households; second, report to the Municipal Supply and Marketing Cooperative and obtain its financial support to purchase 500 chicks and distribute them to the 3 demonstration households, while also delivering special chicken feed to their homes; third, organize these demonstration households for one concentrated training session.

Now, after more than 2 months of scientific and careful raising, the survival rate of these 500 chicks is above 95%, and the effect is very good. But next, after more farmers participate, they will face the problem of sales. For this reason, the working group made plans in advance: first, in mid-to-late December, gather farmers in the village who have farming conditions and relatively high enthusiasm for farming at the homes of the demonstration households, and through methods such as seeing for themselves and hearing the demonstration households explain, let more farmers participate; second, when conditions are mature, unite the large farming households to jointly establish a farmers' professional cooperative; third, have the working group coordinate the village "two committees" and the specialized cooperative to build a sales platform with outside sellers.