The Farming Story of Bamboo Rat Breeder Liang Zhen
"For our area, raising bamboo rats is an offbeat but hot industry. First, few people raise them. Second, the investment isn't too large. Third, the market prospects look good." Talking about raising bamboo rats, Liang Zhen spoke endlessly and with great familiarity.
Liang Zhen, who is past 40, was originally an employee of the Siding mining area in Rong'an County. In 2006, she became a laid-off worker due to enterprise restructuring. In 2007, undaunted by being laid off, Liang Zhen began raising meat rabbits. However, raising rabbits required high technical skill and carried great market risk. For this reason, last year, with the help of the Party branch of the Siding mining area management office, she switched to raising bamboo rats.
Liang Zhen observing bamboo rats.
In April last year, Liang Zhen invested nearly 5,000 yuan to rent a 100-square-meter house, build 60 small rat pens, and went to Yangshuo, Guilin, to introduce 7 breeding rats for raising. Four months later, the female rats gave birth one after another, and Liang Zhen was overjoyed. But immersed in the joy of success, she never expected that most of the more than 20 newborn baby rats, less than a week old, disappeared every few days. This left Liang Zhen puzzled.
To find out the reason, Liang Zhen stayed in the rat pens for a full 3 nights, and discovered that the baby rats that had "disappeared" had been eaten by the female rats that had given birth. Why do female rats eat baby rats? How can female rats be prevented from eating baby rats? With these questions, the quick-witted and inquisitive Liang Zhen, besides carefully studying relevant books and searching for related information online, also asked experienced rat raisers everywhere, and finally figured out that after a female rat gives birth, because her body lacks water and nutrients such as vitamins, if artificial supplementation is not provided in time, the female rat will eat the baby rats to replenish water and nutrients for herself. Through half a year of diligent study, Liang Zhen mastered a complete set of solid skills for raising bamboo rats.
With her expert rat-raising skills, Liang Zhen handled bamboo rat breeding with ease. Under her careful care, the bamboo rats grew from the original 7 to more than 150 at present, and they were large and plump, with glossy fur and tender meat, highly favored by customers. For this reason, although bamboo rat traders from Nanning, Guilin, Liuzhou and neighboring counties and townships came in droves, offering a high price of 250--300 yuan per pair, Liang Zhen was only willing to sell a small number of breeding rats and kept most of them for her own breeding.
Now, facing the promising bamboo rat market, Liang Zhen is full of confidence. She persists in taking the new path of getting rich by self-breeding and self-raising bamboo rats, and strives to make a big fortune from rats in the Year of the Ox.