College student makes 200,000 yuan in half a year raising chickens in the mountains of Luzhou and wants to lead villagers to prosperity

"Cluck, cluck, cluck..." On the rocky hills of Group 3, Chaolong Village, Shangma Town, Naxi District, Luzhou City, one often sees a young man and his girlfriend deep in the woods, keeping company with a flock of chickens, cutting grass, feeding, and doing disease prevention, busy and happy. This young man is a college student from Xiangxi, Hunan, named Gao Jixian, 27 years old this year, who came here alone to learn ecological chicken farming 6 years ago.

His girlfriend Jian Xue serves as Gao Jixian's assistant, learning chicken-raising skills

Today, Gao Jixian not only owns a breeding base with an annual income of 300,000 yuan and has bought a commercial apartment in the town, but has also won the heart of a local girl, Jian Xue, giving him both career and love success.

Traveling far to another place to learn the "true art" of chicken farming

In September 2009, Gao Jixian saw an online report about a farmer named Gu Bangze in Haibangcao Village, Shangma Town, Naxi District, who became rich by raising pheasants, and he was filled with envy. Thinking of the broad market for pheasant farming, he felt that if he could go and learn to follow the path of pheasant farming, he would surely make a name for himself. A month later, Gao Jixian came alone to Haibangcao Village and took Gu Bangze as his teacher.

In order to master pheasant farming techniques, Gao Jixian began by learning temperature control in the pheasant chick brooding room and vaccinating the chickens. Whenever the pheasants got sick or were in poor condition, he volunteered to take on the work. The breeding base had several thousand pheasants each month that needed vaccination and disease prevention, and Gao Jixian took it all on by himself. In order to learn the brooding techniques for pheasants, he was busy with management during the day and stayed on watch in the greenhouse at night. During the period when each new batch of pheasant chicks was being hatched and brooded, Gao Jixian never once had a sound sleep. Ordinarily, Gao Jixian paid attention to observing the pheasants' living habits, and whenever he did not understand something he asked his teacher, and Gu Bangze explained it to him without holding anything back.

After 3 years of study, Gao Jixian had basically mastered the habits of pheasants and the related knowledge of disease prevention and control, and became his teacher's capable assistant. Gu Bangze simply hired him as a professional technician for the breeding farm and offered him a salary of 3,000 yuan per month, asking Gao Jixian to stay.

Targeting the gap period, making 200,000 yuan in half a year through entrepreneurship

"The fact that I can now start a business on my own is inseparable from my teacher's support in providing me with forest land free of charge in previous years, which allowed me to raise pheasants myself to increase my income during the gap period when pheasant chicks were not being hatched," Gao Jixian said.

From October each year to March of the following year, because the weather turns cold, the hatching and brooding of pheasant chicks stops. Facing a gap period of nearly half a year, starting in 2012, Gao Jixian used part of the mountain forest contracted by Gu Bangze and invested in building his own pheasant breeding farm, raising more than 3,000 commercial pheasants each year to increase his income. Before releasing them to roam, because pheasants need a 6-month growth period to reach just over 3 jin in weight, Gao Jixian basically chose August and September as the feeding time, so as to catch the period around the Spring Festival and sell them at a good price. In order to ensure the quality of the pheasants, during the raising process, in addition to letting the pheasants run around and forage in a shed enclosed within the mountain forest, Gao Jixian also used comprehensive techniques for farming. He crushed corn and added soybean meal, wheat bran, Chinese herbal medicine and other ingredients in certain proportions to make feed suitable for pheasant growth. After feeding them for 1 month, he fed the pheasants insects trapped each morning. The insects trapped with solar ultraviolet lamps are a high-quality animal protein feed that pheasants need.

These pheasants grown for 6 months have tender meat and a rich gamey aroma, and there is no worry at all about selling them. Especially around the Spring Festival, when there are few pheasants on the market, the price per bird is 10 yuan to 20 yuan higher than usual, and they can sell for 120 yuan. Subtracting the cost of 60 yuan, the net profit can reach 60 yuan. Over half a year, Gao Jixian earned 200,000 yuan.

Wants to lead villagers to prosperity together

In the first half of the year, Gao Jixian helped Gu Bangze hatch and brood chicks, and in the second half of the year he raised pheasants himself, which gave him a net income of more than 200,000 yuan each year.

In order to raise chickens with peace of mind, Gao Jixian bought a commercial apartment of more than 120 sq m in Shangma Town. In this way, Gao Jixian also had his own home in a foreign place. Although he bought a home in the market town, Gao Jixian still lived in the mountain forest, dealing with pheasants all day long.

What Gao Jixian had not expected was that his 6 years of persistent chicken-raising not only became a much-told tale in and around the village, but also drew the attention of a girl named Jian Xue from a neighboring village. In early March this year, with the matchmaking of a warm-hearted local woman, Gao Jixian and Jian Xue established a romantic relationship. After they began dating, Jian Xue came to serve as Gao Jixian's assistant in hatching and brooding chicks, learning pheasant farming skills.

In May this year, in order to care for Jian Xue's father, who was home alone, and to develop the chicken-raising business, Gao Jixian invested more than 100,000 yuan and enclosed more than 50 mu in the woods behind Jian Xue's home as a breeding base, raising more than 7,000 ecological native chickens in a cyclic manner. It is expected that starting in October, Gao Jixian will have more than a thousand native chickens coming to market each month. Talking about his future plans, Gao Jixian wants to form a professional cooperative to drive surrounding villagers to raise forest chickens and increase their income and become prosperous.