Specialty farming helps Tang Meixian realize her dream of becoming rich through technology

Whenever you drive past the entrance of Fengdong Village, you can hear gobble-gobble animal calls. Looking closer, it turns out to be a turkey farm. Walking into the farm, one sees a woman feeding a large flock of turkeys. Out of curiosity, I struck up a conversation with the woman feeding the turkeys and learned that her name is Tang Meixian, a native of Zhehua Village, Zhemiao Township, 47 years old. She began raising turkeys in 2009 and moved the farm to this location in 2012. In addition to turkeys, the farm also raises local Yan chickens. Currently, there are 300 meat turkeys, 150 medium-sized turkeys, 180 young turkeys, and 220 local Yan chickens on hand.

Speaking of the early days when she first started raising turkeys, this ordinary middle-aged rural woman wore a look of grievance and helplessness. She said that in 2009, when she bought turkey chicks for the first time, due to inexperience and an inability to tell them apart, someone sold her other chicks worth 3 yuan each as turkey chicks worth 15 yuan each. It was only after raising them for a month that she realized she had been cheated. This incident still leaves a deep impression on her to this day. However, it was precisely because of this incident that she made up her mind to raise turkeys well, to raise them to a high standard, and to raise them with distinctive features.

Tang Meixian's hometown, Zhehua Village in Zhemiao Township, has a distinctive feature: almost every household raises turkeys, but not as commercial chickens, only as a self-sufficient delicacy for New Year and festivals, so there has never been large-scale farming. Unlike other chickens, turkeys do not use corn as their main feed; turkeys mainly eat green fodder. Tang Meixian, like other villagers, raised them for 2 years. Gradually, she became dissatisfied with raising turkeys merely as a holiday delicacy. On market days, she tried taking them to the market to sell. At first, because everyone did not understand turkeys and did not know how they tasted, no one dared to buy. Later, after her repeated introductions, some customers began to buy them, and then the market gradually improved. Over the course of a year, she could sell several dozen. Later she thought, if a small township can sell several dozen a year, then going to the county seat should allow her to sell even more. With this idea, she and her husband made several trips to survey the area around Tianlin County seat and found that no one around the county seat was raising turkeys. If a turkey farm were established around the county seat, the prospects for supplying the county market should be quite broad. When they found that Fengdong Village in Leli Town was only a few kilometers from the county seat, with National Highway 324 passing through, and that the riverside was covered with forage grass that could be used to feed turkeys, the couple decided to establish a turkey farm around Fengdong Village, which had convenient transportation conditions and abundant forage resources. After she told her brother about the idea, she received his strong support, and then in 2012 the brother and sister each established their own turkey farms near Fengdong Village.

Tang Meixian's farm covers an area of about 2000 sq m, with a total investment of more than 100,000 yuan. At the beginning, because she did not have a good grasp of technical details such as feed formulation and disease prevention and control, the turkey survival rate was very low. So while paying attention in daily life to observing turkeys' eating habits, preferences, and other characteristics, Tang Meixian also used the evening hours to consult relevant materials and learn some common turkey disease prevention measures. Now she has gradually developed a set of scientific breeding techniques. Previously, she had always bought chicks from turkey hatcheries, and the survival rate was not high. Starting last year, she collected breeding eggs herself and sent them to a hatchery for incubation. The survival rate increased considerably, and she could also sell chicks, which not only improved the survival rate but also increased her income.

Because Tang Meixian's turkeys and local Yan chickens are raised in the wild and their main feed is wild forage grass, their meat color is good and they have a strong gamey flavor, making them deeply loved by consumers. Now customers who have bought her turkeys often come to her farm themselves to select and buy. In the past two years, the annual output has been 5-6 batches of 500-1000 meat chickens, 200-500 chicks, and 500-800 local Yan chickens, with annual net income of more than 100,000 yuan.

Specialty farming and scientific management have brought Tang Meixian good returns. Speaking of the future, Tang Meixian is full of longing: the next step is to continue taking the path of ecological and specialty farming, expand the scale of the farm, let more consumers eat meat they can trust, and strive to lead the surrounding people to raise turkeys together, developing and strengthening it as a specialty industry.