The IT Elite's Way of Raising Sheep: Sharing Breeding Experience
At a seminar on revitalizing the Hu sheep industry held in Zhejiang recently, Wang Weilin became the focus. As one of the two farmers presenting their experience, Wang Weilin had no sooner finished describing his way of raising sheep than he drew much praise. To count this "shepherd's" tricks of the trade, they come down to "careful calculation," which may be inseparable from his more than twenty years of experience in software engineering.
Wang Weilin's sheep farm is located in Shuanglin Town, Nanxun District, Huzhou City, which has been a major Hu sheep producing area in the Taihu Lake basin since ancient times. At first, Wang Weilin had no intention of raising sheep; he merely hoped to build a small farmstead here for relatives and friends to rest in their spare time. Only at the strong recommendation of the village officials did he begin to pay attention to the Hu sheep industry.
At the end of 2012, the sheep farm's business license and 205 mu of transferred land were obtained quickly, and Nanyuanli Ecological Agriculture Technology Co., Ltd. was announced as established. But Wang Weilin, who understood only software, knew nothing about raising sheep, and had to seek teachers everywhere to learn the craft. For an IT elite to enter the sheep-raising world, he must have something unique to be competitive. Over the next year or more, what Wang Weilin thought about most was this: how to raise Hu sheep in a more ecological and more economical way.
On the sheep farm, beyond the more than 20 mu of sheep sheds, 150 mu of land is devoted to planting king grass; this pasture grass is simple to grow and can yield three to four harvests a year.
Wang Weilin told reporters that these fresh pastures serve only as one component of the Hu sheep's feed. Each year, the farm also purchases straw, rapeseed stalks, and other crop residues from surrounding farmers; after chopping and rubbing, these are mixed and stirred with pasture grass, mushroom residue, tofu residue, and the like, then treated with biological bacterial strains to make silage. In this way, Hu sheep become the "scavengers" of agricultural waste, and the feeding cost of each Hu sheep can also be reduced by more than 100 yuan.
On Wang Weilin's sheep farm, a pond of more than 20 mu has been specially set aside for raising yellow eels and domestic fish. By feeding them earthworms, more than 100,000 yuan in feed costs can be saved, and last year the profit from yellow eels alone exceeded 300,000 yuan. Today, the farm has more than 3,000 Hu sheep. With more sheep manure, Wang Weilin is preparing to set up an organic fertilizer processing plant. In this way, sheep manure that originally sold for only just over 200 yuan per ton can, after processing, rise in value to more than 600 yuan per ton.
What puts Wang Weilin more at ease is that since Zhejiang launched the transformation and upgrading of its livestock industry, it has attached great importance to the Hu sheep industry. This year the province also listed Hu sheep as a characteristic and advantageous livestock industry and launched the implementation of a "three-year action plan for upgrading and development," one of the directions advocated being "ecological circulation." In Wang Weilin's view, adjusting the structure and transforming the mode of agricultural development is imperative, and the key still lies in finding markets and grasping marketing, which will always remain his unchanging main focus.