Bamboo rat farming, have you been to Guangxi to investigate?

These past few days, an old friend who farms bamboo rats in Hunan - why do I call him an old friend? He first contacted me back in 2016, called me up. He had been farming bamboo rats for three years, with low breeding rates and low survival rates. It felt like a shame to give up, but if he did not give up, well, three years had passed and he had not earned a single cent. Give up or keep going? He had been agonizing over it, and asked me if there was any solution.

In Guangxi there are many bamboo rat villages, where every household in the village raises them, all using their own old houses to farm bamboo rats.

In 2014 he watched a bamboo rat farming story on the show "Road to Wealth" and thought it was an opportunity, a perfect fit for him: the capital investment was not large, and crucially the labor input was not large either - about two hours of feeding time a day was enough. He himself worked at his hometown village and town, so he had plenty of time. He figured nothing suited him better than farming bamboo rats.

Thinking he could make money and it would be this easy, he started right away. He learned quite a bit of bamboo rat farming technique online, then contacted a local farmer who raised bamboo rats and brought home 30 pairs from that farmer. The first two weeks the bamboo rats were a bit unstable, with 6 deaths, which was still acceptable. But in the first year only about 20 pups survived. The techniques online said first-year survival rates are generally not high, so he thought the second year should bring high production and high survival rates. In the second year, fewer than 30 young bamboo rats survived. This year, the third year, the survival rate is still not high. This result was completely unacceptable. With three years of input plus his own investment costs, and having developed to this point, he had not sold a single bamboo rat. In fact, he had never seriously calculated his costs. The basic situation was simply input with no output, and now he had reached the point where there was no reason to keep going. Was it a problem with my breeding management, or are bamboo rats just like this, with inherently low survival and breeding rates?

Guangxi has many buying stations, and farmers can deliver directly to them.

So these past few days he called me again, hoping to get the answer from me. I gave him two options - the same two options as a year ago.

1. Give up, stop farming bamboo rats.

2. Come to Guangxi to investigate anew, then decide.

He called me back in 2016, and I suggested he come to Guangxi to investigate, but he kept saying he was busy and had no time. A year later my opinion is still the same: if you are sure you still want to farm bamboo rats, first come to Guangxi and investigate the basic situation of bamboo rat farming.

Why come to Guangxi to investigate bamboo rats (personal opinion)

1. Guangxi has the most bamboo rat farming - this point should need no debate.

2. Guangxi's bamboo rat farming techniques lead other places.

3. Guangxi's bamboo rat breeding stock and commercial animals are the cheapest.

4. Why are there relatively many success stories in Guangxi bamboo rat farming? Because many people farm bamboo rats, so naturally many succeed - and of course just as many fail.

In places where bamboo rat farming is relatively concentrated, farmers will bring out their bamboo rats and sell them stall-style.

These are the 4 reasons for him to come to Guangxi.

Of course, having been to Guangxi does not guarantee you can farm bamboo rats well, but if you have never been, it is very hard to farm them well, because you have no goal to learn from.

Guangxi locals cannot necessarily farm bamboo rats well either.

The key in coming to Guangxi is to figure out clearly how bamboo rats are farmed and how bamboo rats make money. If you have not figured it out, or only half understand it, coming here is useless.

One last piece of advice: before farming bamboo rats, come to Guangxi to investigate bamboo rats, otherwise your dream of getting rich from bamboo rats is just a dream.

Reporting and editing: Xia Zhihua