The farming story of specialty breeder Ge Penghui

    On June 10, in Xirang Village, Yanghan Township, Qian County, 28-year-old Ge Penghui was busy shipping 1,000 wild pheasant eggs by air to a breeder in **Kashgar. This college graduate who left the countryside returned home two years after graduating to develop specialty farming, raising pheasants. Today, calling himself Shaanxi's "Pheasant King," he has already sold his products within and beyond the province, leading a group of breeders onto the road to prosperity. 

    Ge Penghui graduated in 2005 from Southwest Agricultural University with a major in marketing and a minor in animal medicine. After graduating, he found a job as a technician at an animal pharmaceutical factory in Chongqing. In 2006, Ge Penghui had the idea of starting his own business and quit his job to return home. At first he wanted to open a workshop-style pig feed factory, but considering he had no advantage, he gave up the idea. After market research, he finally set his sights on the pheasant market, which had small breeding numbers and large demand potential in Shaanxi. 

    "Child, we don't dare do it, we can't afford to lose, the family has no money, we worked hard to put you through college for several years, you can't just go back to the countryside, can you? That way relatives and neighbors will laugh at us." Regarding Ge Penghui starting his own business, his mother could never get past it in her mind. But Ge Penghui believed in his own judgment; after all, he was still young, and if he failed, he could just start over. 

    In June 2008, Ge Penghui raised more than 40,000 yuan from various sources, introduced 300 fine breeding pheasants from a large pheasant breeding operation in Chongqing, and built the "Qian County Pheasant Farm" on his family's 3 mu of land. Three months later, Ge Penghui harvested his first batch of 100 pheasant eggs, but only 22 healthy chicks hatched. To improve the hatch rate, Ge Penghui built a hatching water bed at home and soon raised the hatching rate to 85%. 

    In November 2008, Ge Penghui took his entrepreneurial project to the Yangling Agricultural High-tech Fair, and his pheasant farming suddenly took off. People came in an endless stream to inquire, many breeders introduced breeding pheasants from him, signed agreements with him, and joined his pheasant breeding team, and some even placed orders directly. Before the 2009 Spring Festival, his farm had sold more than 7,000 commercial pheasants, with sales reaching more than 300,000 yuan. Now, the farm's maximum stock has reached more than 2,000 birds. The pheasants he raises are favored by hotels, restaurants, farmhouse resorts and tourist attractions, and are also sold to the Qiao Family Compound in Shanxi. 

    Now, a pair of Ge Penghui's pheasants can sell for 100 yuan, and the more than 60,000 yuan he invested in the early stage has long been fully recovered. "This year, my goal is a market volume of 30,000 birds, to become Shaanxi's 'Pheasant King,'" Ge Penghui said excitedly.