Meat donkey farming makes Shenzhou farmer Zhang Shuyu rich

At the entrance of Xiputuan Village, Tangfeng Town, Shenzhou City, little donkeys were braying "hee-haw" happily as they frolicked in the spacious donkey pen... "There is a lot to learn in meat donkey farming. If you give them too little feed, they won't put on fat; if you give them too much, they won't gain meat either. This amount is the hardest thing to get right!" When talking about the "art of raising donkeys," the owner Zhang Shuyu had one method after another. He said excitedly that in just one year, his meat donkey farm had grown rapidly from a dozen or so at the beginning to the current scale of more than 40 head in stock and more than 300 head sold per year, generating an annual profit of more than 300,000 yuan.

Zhang Shuyu was a "cattle broker" who had been in the business of raising and trading cattle for many years. "Raising cattle takes too much effort and too much skill; it's hard to do!" Because he had done business in Northeast China for many years, at the end of 2010 he keenly targeted market demand and decided to change trades, going into the donkey-raising business that few others did. After investigating many options, he boldly invested more than 200,000 yuan and built a meat donkey farm covering 11 mu, developing the donkey-raising industry.

Relying on years of experience in the breeding market, Zhang Shuyu refined the links in the donkey market. Instead of raising donkeys from young to adult, he positioned donkey raising at the stage of fattening young donkeys. "This way the risk is small, turnover is fast, and profits are large!" In order to learn meat donkey fattening techniques, he bought donkey-raising technical books and CDs from bookstores, devoted himself to studying them whenever he had time, and made many trips to donkey farms in Shandong and Northeast China for visits and inspections. It did not take long before he mastered a complete set of meat donkey breeding and fattening techniques. With mature technology as his backing, Zhang Shuyu purchased large numbers of lean donkeys and young donkeys of excellent breeds that were easy to raise from all over the country. After two months of scientific feeding, he fattened them into fat donkeys and strong donkeys, and once they reached the target weight, he sold them to surrounding areas, with very considerable economic benefits. Seizing this breeding pattern, he expanded the donkey farm rapidly in a "short, flat, fast" manner, increasing the stock from the initial 10 head to 40 head, and economic benefits quickly doubled.

As the scale expanded, Zhang Shuyu also worked hard on reducing costs. Relying on regional advantages, he successively contracted 15 mu of idle land around the farm and planted all of it with wheat and corn. While the grain harvest was abundant, the corn stalks that used to be burned only as firewood were crushed and became pure natural feed that meat donkeys loved to eat. From this one item alone, the farm could save more than 30,000 yuan in costs each year.

Zhang Shuyu is very confident about the success he has achieved. He said: "Having seized the golden link of fattening young donkeys, our next step is to adopt the model of base plus farmers, provide technology to farmers, buy back adult donkeys, further expand the breeding scale, and drive surrounding farmers to increase their incomes and become rich!" Qiang Zhaohui, Liu Hongying