Raising giant birds that cannot fly but run faster than horses, Thai Binh farmers pay themselves high salaries

After a period of research, seeing that the market had high demand for fruits and specialty animals, Mr. Pham Van Hanh, Dong Quang commune (Dong Hung, Thai Binh) borrowed capital and rented fields from 4 households that did not grow rice and cabbage. Create a dragon fruit garden and build an ostrich cage. 

He said: The cost of renovating the garden and building a barn is about 200 million VND, but the most important thing is to learn experience and techniques for raising, planting, and caring for plants and animals to grow quickly, without disease, and bring good resources. Collect from the first generation. 

Therefore, before implementing the model, I visited and learned from some successful models inside and outside the province to apply. In 2018, I started growing dragon fruit. After a year of planting, the dragon fruit garden yielded its first harvest, confirming its high economic efficiency. 

I boldly multiplied dragon fruit from a few dozen roots to 500 roots on an area of ​​1 acre. Each year, dragon fruit yields 7-8 tons of fruit, minus costs, the profit is nearly 100 million VND.

After several years of investing in raising pigs, chickens, and ducks that were unprofitable due to epidemics, Mr. Hanh switched to raising ostriches, with few people raising them but with high economic value. 

According to him, the difficulty for breeders is that the price of ostrich breeds is quite expensive, 2 million VND/bird, but in return this is an easy animal to raise because the food is mainly vegetables, grass, bran, corn, and rice. Available in the house and garden, waste causes less environmental pollution than pig farming. 

Ostriches have high resistance, they only need to be fully vaccinated when they are young, keep the cage clean, feed them grass and vegetables of all kinds when they are young, and supplement them with bran pellets after 6 months, from the 9th month. Onwards, feed additional corn. 

On average, ostriches gain about 10kg each month. Ostrich meat is soft, low in fat, has a unique delicious taste, and can be processed into many dishes such as stir-frying, grilling, boiling, steaming, making soup..., so the consumer market is quite large.

In the first batch, Mr. Hanh experimentally raised 20 chickens on a cage and yard area of ​​200m2. Thanks to proper technical care, his family's ostriches grow quickly and are not infected with diseases. 

After raising ostriches for 11 months to 1 year, they can reach a weight of 70 kg to over 1 quintal/bird and then they can be sold. During the year, Mr. Hanh sold all his herds, earning nearly 200 million VND, which is the family's highest source of income. 

From initial success, he rebuilt the herd, increasing the number of ostriches to 25, all of which are growing well. In addition, on the farm, Mr. Hanh also built a barn to raise 1.000 chickens and ducks for meat.

Mr. Hanh has just accumulated more than 1 acre of ineffective rice fields. On that area, he will plant more dragon fruit, Thai custard apple trees and dig 4 ponds to raise stuffed snails. 

In addition, he will research ostrich breeding to incubate eggs to have a source of quality ostrich seeds for his family's farm, reduce input costs, and provide other families with livestock development.

Mr. Vu Cong Uan, Chairman of Dong Quang Commune Veterans Association, said: Member Pham Van Hanh is a person who dares to think, dare to do, and is a pioneer in growing dragon fruit and raising ostriches locally. 

Although he is a pioneer, he is eager to learn to improve farming and animal husbandry techniques, so he has succeeded with his transformation model. This is the model we are propagating and mobilizing members to learn and replicate to get rich.