Bamboo rat farming brings in an annual income of over 2 million yuan - how did he do it?

The bamboo rat is also known as the bamboo slip rat or the mountain burrow rat, named because it loves to eat bamboo. This kind of bamboo rat is small in size and has very strong reproductive capacity, feeding mainly on bamboo, sweet potatoes, weeds and so on, and likes to eat corn, sorghum, wheat, sugarcane and more. The body of the bamboo rat is rich in nutrients, including protein, amino acids, iron, calcium, phosphorus and various vitamins. Its nutritional content is far richer than that of chicken, duck, fish, shrimp and crab. It is a mountain delicacy with extremely high nutritional value, and in hotels, restaurants and ordinary eateries it is a sought-after product. Some people may ask, can farming bamboo rats make money?

Below I will carefully do the economic accounting for everyone: how much does it actually cost to raise one bamboo rat from a baby to full size? The answer is 8 fen per day, and the cost of a bamboo rat raised for 6 months is about 14.4 yuan. The daily cost of 8 fen includes the bamboo rat's main food, bamboo and corn and mixed grains; of course, since bamboo is fairly common in rural areas, you can just go up the mountain to gather it yourself, so it is not counted in the cost. Each day the bamboo rat needs to eat about 15 grams of corn and mixed grains, which works out to about 6 fen per day, and the other 2 fen is set aside as loss, such as illness or death.

A breeding rat can be sold after 6 months of raising; a group of three, one male and two females, costs 43.2 yuan, and the market selling price is 500 to 600 yuan - let us just say 500 yuan. In this way two batches can be raised in a year, and the price of two groups would be 1,000 yuan. A husband and wife can easily look after 100 groups of bamboo rats in a year, so that is 100,000 yuan a year. Suppose we assume your farming skills are not good enough and 50 die each year, counting 200 each, then another 10,000 yuan must be deducted, but the net profit is still 90,000 yuan, and bamboo rats are very simple to care for.

Only about four hours a day is enough; an easy 90,000 yuan a year - what could be more comfortable than making money this way? For example, not long ago, a couple in Chongqing who farm bamboo rats appeared on a live-streaming platform, and during an interview with reporters it was found that he began raising bamboo rats at home with his wife in 2010, and after several years of hard work has now reached an annual output value of 2 million yuan. At the very beginning it was not all smooth sailing; in the first year, because they did not understand farming techniques, the bamboo rats did not adapt to the local conditions, and as a result more than two hundred pairs of bamboo rats died, and they lost nearly 200,000 yuan all at once.

Only after asking experts did they learn that the problem lay in the environment. By 2013, he had expanded the bamboo rat farm to 90 mu of land, and in feeding he added more original-ecology bamboo and king grass and so on, so that the survival rate of the bamboo rats increased by a large margin and could fully reach a 90% survival rate. In 2015 he summarized his farming experience and applied for a national patent. He believes that by creating a wild environment, the bamboo rats can both retain their wildness and increase their resistance, and while their activity increases, the flavor of the bamboo rat meat becomes even more delicious.

Over 5 years, the couple invested more than 5 million yuan one after another. When asked about sales channels, he replied: according to the current market conditions, one bamboo rat can sell for about 70 yuan per jin, and besides being sold to the Guangdong area, they are also sold at local hotels and farmhouse restaurants. Moreover, through the form of live streaming, more netizens have come to know how adorably cute the little bamboo rats look, greatly expanding their fame. To this day, bamboo rat meat has already become a very high-end and distinctive delicacy.