After six years of swan farming, Zhou Debin's persistence finally made his dream come true
Recently, a reporter saw by a small river in Yunfeng Village, Fangshan Town, Jiangyang District, Luzhou City: more than 2,000 grey swans, some playing in the stream, some resting in sheds on the bank, and others grazing on ryegrass and lettuce in the more than 50 mu of loquat grove on the bank... Zhou Debin, the owner of the grey swan farm, said while picking up grey swan eggs in the shed: "I have been investing in grey swan farming for 6 years now, with more than 1 million yuan invested, and now I have finally seen hope. At the current market price of 50 yuan per kg, one grey swan can bring a net profit of more than 100 yuan."
"I owe my path into grey swan farming to the second agricultural expo held in Luzhou." Zhou Debin said that in September 2003, at the second China Western Luzhou Expo held in Fuji, Luxian County, when Zhou Debin walked to the Luxian County exhibition hall, he was immediately attracted by the grey swan farming project. After several days of investigation and consulting relevant materials, he resolutely bought 135 breeding geese at 500 yuan each from the participating farm, rented several tens of mu of land in Mianhuapo Town, Naxi District for raising them, and began his grey swan dream.
To make his grey swan wealth dream come true as soon as possible, Zhou Debin did not dare to be careless in any link of the breeding process, and strictly followed every step. But what Zhou Debin did not expect was that after less than 3 months of raising them, the 135 breeding geese died one after another. Zhou Debin did not give up. He invested 150,000 yuan and took over all the breeding geese from that swan farm in Luxian County.
After the previous failure, Zhou Debin did not dare to be any more careless. He got in touch with the owners of two grey swan farms elsewhere and exchanged breeding experience with them from time to time. At the same time, he also sought advice from livestock breeding experts. Thanks to careful and proper management, after several months of raising them, his more than 300 breeding geese had a very high survival rate, and most female swans also began to lay eggs. However, Zhou Debin suffered another blow: the breeding eggs laid by the grey swans simply could not hatch into goslings, and the few that occasionally hatched were mostly deformed.
The situation took a turn in October 2008. Zhou Debin heard that Fangshan Town in Jiangyang District had introduced an enterprise specializing in hatching goose, duck and chicken chicks, and immediately reached an agreement with them: all his breeding goose eggs would be handed over to the enterprise for incubation. To make it convenient to send the eggs for incubation, in January this year, Zhou Debin moved the farm to Yunfeng Village, Fangshan Town.
"It really comes down to different techniques. In the second half of last year, the nearly 3,000 breeding eggs laid by my more than 200 breeding geese actually had a hatching survival rate as high as 80%, otherwise how could my swan farming scale have grown so quickly." Zhou Debin was overjoyed, and he also had a new plan for the next step of development. "The current more than 2,600 swans will all be kept as breeding swans according to the 1:4 breeding requirement, that is, 1 male swan matched with 4 female swans, and by the end of the year the number of breeding swans will reach more than 7,000. Because breeding swans begin laying eggs after 8 months of feeding, and the egg-laying period lasts 4 years, if one breeding swan lays an average of at least 23 eggs a year, and the hatching survival rate is calculated at 80%, then next year nearly 100,000 commercial grey swans can be supplied to the market. At a profit of 100 yuan per swan, the annual profit can reach 10 million."