The Farming Experience of Chen Genchuan, a Major Soft-Shelled Turtle Farmer

    Walking into Zhonglian Village in Heshang Town, one finds mountains all around, a stream babbling through, the sun rising with the dew, and the setting sun glowing with the evening clouds. Hangzhou Jiangen Ecological Breeding Farm is located right in this village full of ecological vitality. At the farm, one sees cement ponds laid out on the ground like a grid. Approaching the pond edge for a look, it is truly spectacular: soft-shelled turtles surface one after another, stretching out their long necks to breathe the fresh air.

"Every soft-shelled turtle here bears the 'ecological' label." The person saying this is none other than the owner of the farm, Chen Genchuan.

Chen Genchuan, 50 years old this year, is burly and dark-faced, with the "traditional look" of someone in the aquatic products business. Chen Genchuan is a native of Hutouchen Village, Chengxiang Subdistrict, and has lived off "the soft-shelled turtle trade" for nearly 20 years. In 1993, he started raising soft-shelled turtles. In the first few years he always worked with partners, doing soft-shelled turtle business successively in Xuxian, Haining and other places. At that time prices were high: a juvenile turtle was worth 7 yuan, commercial turtles reached 70 to 80 yuan per kilogram, and annual income per mu of pond was more than 5,000 yuan. Having tasted the sweetness of soft-shelled turtles, Chen Genchuan grew more confident and bolder. He began raising soft-shelled turtles together with merchants from Taiwan, China, Thailand and other places, and kept at it for many more years.

In 2008, as an agricultural investment-attraction project of Heshang, Chen Genchuan came to Zhonglian Village, contracted 208 mu of water surface, invested 3 million yuan, and set up an ecological soft-shelled turtle farm. This time, he did not cooperate with others but chose to "go solo." "After so many years in soft-shelled turtle farming, I've learned quite a lot of experience, and it's time for me to strike out on my own." This year, he expanded the farm's scale to 548 mu, invested 34 million yuan, built 7 greenhouses of 3,000 sq m on dry land, and built 77 stocking ponds on the water surface. At the same time, he built 30 breeding turtle ponds for raising juvenile turtles.

When talking about how to raise soft-shelled turtles, Chen Genchuan began to "pass on the scriptures and impart the way." "Japanese soft-shelled turtles and American pearl soft-shelled turtles grow fast, have strong disease resistance, are suitable for greenhouse and outdoor pond farming, and are in demand on the market." He said that after buying breeding turtles from elsewhere, he began self-breeding and self-raising. Every year from May to August, the breeding turtles lay 4 to 5 clutches of eggs in the sand pits beside the breeding turtle ponds, about 12 eggs per clutch. Then the eggs are placed in greenhouses for incubation. In a constant temperature of 30 degrees, after about 55 days, the juvenile turtles hatch. The young turtles hatched that year must be raised in the greenhouse. By June of the following year, after the weather warms up, they are all put into outdoor ponds, and by the end of that year they can be sold. Chen Genchuan also revealed the secret to raising soft-shelled turtles: "Besides eating complete soft-shelled turtle feed, my turtles must also be fed enough small fish, so their taste is no worse than wild ones at all."

After many years of hard work, Chen Genchuan has become a major soft-shelled turtle farmer in the true sense. Besides being willing to endure hardship, he is even more willing to use his brain. Through years of exploration, he combined book knowledge with practice and finally figured out the tricks, arriving at experience such as "disinfect once every nine days, feed medicine ten times a month, and dry the ponds at year's end."

At present, Chen Genchuan's ecological farm has initially formed a full "one-stop" production system integrating seedling breeding, feed processing and product sales, with a sound industrial chain.

This is still not enough. Chen Genchuan said he plans, through 5 years of development, to turn the farm into a leading agricultural enterprise, and to cooperate with surrounding farmers to establish an "enterprise + base + farmer" model, creating an ecological soft-shelled turtle "kingdom" with an annual output value of 50 million yuan and an annual total output of 100 tons of high-quality ecological brand soft-shelled turtles.