Raising deer combined with growing ginseng for high efficiency

Since 2021, Mr. Nguyen Duc Hien (in My Khanh hamlet, Phan Me commune, Phu Luong) has taken advantage of his family's garden area to invest in raising spotted deer combined with growing ginseng. In a short time, this model has shown economic efficiency, opening up a new direction with many prospects in the locality.

After 1 year of planting, Mr. Nguyen Duc Hien's ginseng garden is growing well, producing flowers and leaves to feed deer.

After 1 year of planting, Mr. Nguyen Duc Hien's ginseng garden has grown well, yielding flowers and leaves to feed deer.

Realizing that deer farming was still quite new in the locality, Mr. Hien studied on his own and spent time consulting and learning from experiences in many places. In 2021, with the accumulated money plus bank loans, he invested 1.2 billion VND to buy 20 breeding animals and build a barn system.

According to Mr. Hien, deer are easy to raise because they have good resistance, are disease-free, and are omnivorous. Their main food is grass, leaves, and corn. He sets aside 1 acre to grow elephant grass for the deer to eat. The deer farm was designed by him and built with bricks and a sturdy steel frame, divided into many small cells, each cell raising one deer, with ventilation holes on the roof and around the walls. In the summer, fans are installed, and in the winter, tarpaulins are used to cover the barns to avoid cold winds. In addition, he regularly cleans the barns with lime powder and biological products to disinfect and sterilize, ensuring that the breeding area is always airy and clean.

Up to now, after nearly 3 years, he has accumulated a lot of experience, the deer herd is growing healthily. Currently, there are 21 deer in the barn, including 14 antlers and 7 breeding deer. For antlers, on average, one deer can cut about 1.7 kg of antlers/year (cut twice a year). In 2023 alone, he cut more than 20 kg of antlers, earning a profit of 350 million VND. As for breeding deer, each year, Mr. Hien sells 6-7 deer (price 12-13 million VND/deer).

Seeing that raising deer is not too hard, and with extra time, Mr. Hien returned to Tan Yen district ( Bac Giang ) to research and learn about ginseng. In early 2023, he leveled the hill, made beds, and installed an automatic irrigation system to bring 3,000 ginseng plants to plant on an area of 1 hectare. According to him, ginseng is a precious medicinal herb with many health benefits. This climbing plant is suitable for hills and slopes, is easy to care for, has few pests and diseases, and only needs to pay attention to watering regularly and cleaning weeds in the first year for the plant to grow quickly.

Mr. Nguyen Duc Hien is building ginseng flower tea as an OCOP product of Phan Me commune, (Phu Luong).

He shared that after less than a year, the ginseng plant has grown well and bloomed. Normally, it takes about 5 years to harvest the roots (currently selling for 1.5 million VND/kg of roots on the market). While waiting to harvest the roots, he can still pick flowers and trim leaves for deer to eat. Last season, he harvested more than 200 kg of fresh flowers. He harvested the ginseng flowers to sell fresh (price 230,000 VND/kg) and dried (price 800,000 VND/kg). Realizing the potential of ginseng, he recently registered to develop ginseng flower tea as an OCOP product.

Visiting the deer barn and ginseng garden, we were impressed with Mr. Hien's farming methods. Not only is it scientifically designed and airy, the barn is always kept clean and tidy. The ginseng garden is planted in straight rows and cleared of weeds.

According to Mr. Hien, both raising sika deer and growing ginseng are very new in the locality but very promising. The input cost to implement the model is not much, almost following a closed, circular process. All the deer manure is used to fertilize the plants, and ginseng leaves are used as food for the deer. Of course, to be successful, the first thing is to be diligent, willing to learn and gain experience. Realizing that the newly planted ginseng has had certain effects, many people have come to his house to learn from his experience. He is currently cultivating 5,000 ginseng roots to sell according to orders.

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