How to raise Asian swamp eels? He Xiaodong earns 400,000 a year
"Working for others is not a long-term plan; starting your own business opens up a broader world." This is the experience that He Xiaodong, a college student who returned to his hometown in Zhanggong Community, Yuanshan Town, Pingchang County, summed up from working away from home and starting a business back home.
He Xiaodong, who holds a junior college degree, used the skills he learned while working away from home to set up an ecological Asian swamp eel farming company in his hometown of Zhanggong Community. It mainly produces Asian swamp eel fry and carries out ecological grow-out farming of adult eels. At present, more than 70 Asian swamp eel fry breeding ponds have been built, 600 sq m of eel farming cages have been completed, with an annual output of 15,000 jin of adult eels, an annual output value of more than 400,000 yuan, and it has driven more than 300 farming households to develop aquaculture.
In 1998, He Xiaodong was admitted with excellent results to the aquaculture major at Neijiang Agricultural College. Just after he started school, his mother suddenly suffered from heart disease, and He Xiaodong dropped out several times to go home and work to help his frail mother. Because the family was poor, with the support of the village Party branch, he took out a loan of 8,000 yuan to finish his studies. To earn money as soon as possible to treat his mother's illness, after graduation, He Xiaodong immediately went to work in the coastal areas, shouldering the heavy burden of family life with his young shoulders.
In Lianyungang, Jiangsu, He Xiaodong worked as a porter, construction worker and fish bait salesman. The excessive physical labor every day left him exhausted, but his monthly income was only more than 1,000 yuan. In hardship, he actively sought change and came to understand a truth: "Without a specialized skill, no matter how hard you work, it is very difficult to get rich." In 2002, he went to work for an aquaculture enterprise and devoted himself to learning aquaculture technology. After five years of hard struggle, not only did his monthly income rise to 5,000 yuan, but he also learned a whole set of techniques for aquatic product hatching, seedling rearing, farming and disease prevention and control.
"Better to be a boss earning one cent than a hired hand earning ten yuan." He Xiaodong always believed that working away from home for a long time was not a solution, and that he should start his own business and build something. Through market research, he found that farming Asian swamp eels had good economic returns and relatively stable market conditions, while special aquaculture in his hometown was still a blank, so he decided to return home and engage in special aquaculture.
In 2007, He Xiaodong returned to his hometown, rented 3 mu of land in his village, invested 100,000 yuan to build 29 eel farming ponds, and began farming Asian swamp eels. That year, he produced more than 2,000 jin of commercial eels, creating an output value of 70,000 yuan. The next year he decided to expand the farming scale, but ran into difficulties with funds. Watching the pond full of Asian swamp eels stretching out their heads waiting to be fed, He Xiaodong was so anxious that his head was covered in sweat. With no other way out, he decided to sell the home he owned in Pingchang County town. But his wife did not agree: "If we sell the house, where will we live? The child still has to go to school!" He Xiaodong said: "If we don't have a house, we can rent. After the farming scale is expanded, we can buy a big house in three to five years." After selling the home, He Xiaodong put all 170,000 yuan into the Asian swamp eel farm.
At present, the farm has built 70 eel fry breeding ponds, and has built heated hatching ponds, a medicine room and an animal protein bait workshop. At the beginning of this year, he invested another 330,000 yuan, rented a hill pond in his village, set up 120 cages in the pond with an area of 600 sq m, and built a new 160 sq m fly maggot breeding workshop with a daily output of 80 kg of fly maggots. He said that this year he expects to produce 7,500 kg of adult eels, and at current market prices, this can achieve an output value of more than 400,000 yuan.
"Special aquaculture requires little investment and brings quick returns." Speaking of future development, He Xiaodong is full of confidence. He has decided to continue expanding the scale, with Asian swamp eel farming as the lead, and gradually add special farming varieties such as qingbo, white crucian carp, big-mouth catfish and loach; using the "company + farming households" development model, with the company providing fry, uniformly buying back products, fully mobilizing local farming households to develop special aquatic product farming, expanding the farming area, increasing farming output and varieties, and striving to develop aquaculture into an industry that increases local farmers' income and helps them get rich.