Seventy-something Elder Zhang Yueren Raises Rongsen Pigs

    Recently, a new generation of high-quality meat pigs named "Rongsen Pigs" from the mountainous region of northeastern Guangdong has become widely favored by farmers and consumers in Heyuan City. This type of meat pig, specially crossbred and bred using mountain Chinese herbal medicine additives as the main feed, is a "new variety" of meat pig jointly bred and developed this year by 2 seventy-something elders in Zijin County of the city.

According to Zhang Yueren, a 77-year-old retired professor who studied in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and is now a villager in Zhongba Town, Zijin County, in order to breed pollution-free, purely ecological meat pigs, starting last winter, he and Cai Xiangyuan, a nearly seventy-year-old local "barefoot doctor" known as the "Little Grass Immortal," agreed to select a site in Zhankeng Village, Linjiang Town, Zijin County, to change conventional harmful feed and rearing methods and jointly research raising "Rongsen Pigs" with Chinese herbal medicine additives as the main feed. Zhang Yueren told reporters that they raised "Blue Wild Pigs," produced by crossbreeding wild boars with Zijin Lantang pigs, to a body weight of about 50 kg, then mixed into the self-made feed a Chinese herbal medicine additive formulated by Cai Xiangyuan, continued raising them to 75 kg to 100 kg, and finally sold them after they became "Rongsen Pigs."

After several months of breeding, the 2 elders Zhang Yueren and Cai Xiangyuan recently finally succeeded in breeding the first batch of "Rongsen Pigs" and put them on the market. This batch of "Rongsen Pigs," with a tender taste, sweet and crisp meat, and a price twice that of ordinary meat pigs, is in short supply on the market and has been favored and snapped up by local consumers and pig farmers.