Dawu advances cattle breed improvement to develop beef cattle and dairy buffalo farming

    In recent years, in the mountainous area of Dawu, a major livestock county, beef cattle farming and dairy buffalo farming are replacing draft cattle rearing, and developing beef cattle and dairy buffalo is becoming an important path for farmers to escape poverty and move toward a moderately prosperous life. Please listen to this report by Wen Bo, reporter from Dawu Radio Station.

Zhang Xiaozhou, a villager of Gaofeng Village, Daxin Town, Dawu County, invested more than 100,000 yuan in 2008 to set up the Gaofeng cattle farm, raising 30 beef cattle, which has now reached a certain scale and achieved good economic returns.

Zhang Xiaozhou: "Last September I bought 30 calves at more than 3,000 yuan each and raised them for nine months. Now the big ones have grown to around 1,200 jin; calculated at market prices, each can sell for an average of 10,000 yuan."

Dawu has a mountain area of 1.743 million mu, including 1.24 million mu of pastureland suitable for grazing. In recent years, Dawu's livestock farming has initially formed yellow cattle and crossbred beef cattle farming based mainly on the four major mountain systems of Dawu Mountain, Xianjüding, Niangniangding and Wuyue Mountain, and has formed a layout for developing dairy buffalo farming based mainly on the three major water systems of "Huanhe, Zhuganhe and Sheshui", with the county slaughtering 48,000 beef cattle annually.

Crossbreeding improvement is an important path for promoting beef cattle farming. Dawu launched frozen semen insemination of cattle in 2006, with 2,000 inseminations per year, striving to make the county's beef cattle insemination volume exceed 10,000 head within five years, and breed improvement in cattle alone will increase farmers' income by 10 million yuan.