From firefighter to "commander": what he went through

    "Hey, are you Commander Zheng? Please send at least 5 boxes of eggs to Lianjiechang right away, the sooner the better." "All right, I'll bring them to you right away." This was the content of a phone call on July 28 between Zheng Yi, a large-scale specialized chicken farmer in Jinpen Village, Tian'e Township, Renshou County, and the person in charge of a canteen of the Chuanwei Iron and Steel Group Co., Ltd. in Lianjie Town, Weiyuan County.

This Zheng Yi, whom many people call the "commander of the three armed forces," is 29 years old this year, has a high school education, and is a Communist Party member. After being discharged from the fire brigade, because he became the largest specialized large-scale farmer of chickens, ducks and fruit in the entire township, he was respectfully called the "commander of the three armed forces" by local cadres and the masses.

A high school student stepped into the green barracks

Zheng Yi, born in June 1981, was tempered by his family's poverty, and from the first grade of elementary school he strove to improve himself. By the time he graduated from Lujia High School, he had been rated a "three-good student" every semester. During his time in high school, he was rated an "outstanding Communist Youth League member" by the school Youth League committee for two consecutive years. At the time of high school graduation, although he was excellent in both character and learning and many teachers thought he had every hope of getting into university, he missed university by just one point. Though he had no chance to attend university, he did not become pessimistic or disappointed. In November 1998, he resolutely responded to the call of the Party and the government, signed up for enlistment, and came to the fire detachment of the armed police force in Xiangfan City, Hubei Province, to serve as a soldier, repaying the motherland with practical action.

During his two-year military career in the fire detachment, he fully brought into play his strengths of a high educational level and eagerness to learn modestly. With the help of veteran soldiers, he studied and trained hard in firefighting skills, responded to more than 60 calls, and completed duty tasks satisfactorily. Especially in the local flood-fighting and emergency-rescue battle in July 2000, he and his comrades persisted for four days and four nights, rescuing more than 1,000 disaster victims and more than 40 vehicles. The entire detachment was awarded first-class merit and won praise from all sectors of society. In two years, he received commendations from the detachment twice. In the winter of 2001, he obeyed orders, was discharged, and returned to his hometown.

Zheng Yi said with deep feeling: "It was precisely these two years of military life that not only tempered my body, but also tempered my unyielding will, laying a solid foundation for me to stand firm in the great storms of the later market economy."

Returning home to start a business, he first became the "chicken commander"

As early as before Zheng Yi joined the army, his father Zheng Wenfeng had set up a small chicken farm at home. With 1,300 laying hens, the annual net income was more than 30,000 yuan, making him a famous specialized chicken farmer in Fuhe Township at that time. Later, he was also elected a representative to the first Meishan Municipal People's Congress. After Zheng Yi was discharged and returned home, after much market investigation and analysis, he felt that developing the chicken industry had great market prospects. Only by expanding the breeding scale and enlarging the chicken farm area could he form a market advantage, enhance the vitality of market competition, and earn more money. With the strong support of village and township cadres and local villagers, Zheng Yi and his father chose another site and invested more than 40,000 yuan to build another chicken farm covering 4 mu, expanding the chicken-raising scale to more than 4,000 birds.

Just when the whole family was envisioning a bright future, no one expected that one night in mid-July of that year, a sudden storm with violent wind and rain completely collapsed the chicken farm, leaving him with a total loss: all more than 4,000 laying hens were crushed to death, chicken cages and medicines worth more than 20,000 yuan were all ruined, and the direct economic loss was more than 100,000 yuan. Seeing such heavy losses, Zheng Yi's mother planned to stop raising chickens, and his father's thinking also wavered somewhat. But Zheng Yi insisted on rallying his forces and returning to his old trade, building the chicken farm again, and moreover building a sturdier and larger chicken farm. He said to his parents: "The road of entrepreneurship is not smooth sailing; one must be able to withstand setbacks in life." After persuading his parents, with the strong support of the Fuhe credit cooperative, he took out a loan of 60,000 yuan to rebuild a larger chicken farm, and bought 6,000 improved-breed chickens from Chongqing to raise. After careful feeding, on the eve of the Spring Festival that year, these 6,000 chickens began laying eggs for the market, and they sold for a good price. Seeing how shrewd his son was, his father handed over the position of chicken farm manager to Zheng Yi. From then on, Zheng Yi was called the "chicken-raising commander" by local cadres, the masses and merchants. In 2002, he gloriously joined the Communist Party of China.

Chicken plague is the natural enemy of chicken farms. After becoming the "chicken-raising commander," Zheng Yi constantly broadened his thinking in practice, studied the pathological changes of chicks, and under the guidance of the doctors at the Lujia Animal Husbandry Central Station found a new path for preventing and treating chick bacterial diseases that took effect quickly, had low cost, and produced notable results. It was precisely this pioneering and innovative rapid method of chicken disease prevention that kept his chicken farm safe and sound during the "avian influenza" viral chicken plague that broke out across the country the year before last, allowing him to calmly make a big profit in the market. After that, he studied reform of chicken feed formulas. After nearly two years and hundreds of repeated comparisons, he finally found a new type of self-mixed feed with low cost, fast growth, no chemical hormones, and a relatively high egg-laying rate. Solving chicken disease prevention and improving the feed formula reduced costs. The breeding scale of "Commander Zheng's" chicken farm expanded from 6,000 birds to more than 10,000 at present, with total annual output value of 850,000 yuan and net income of more than 150,000 yuan. The products sell well in Chengdu, Weiyuan, Renshou, Wangyang, Baofei, Lujia, Fujia, Tian'e, Hejia, Shijing and other places.