Crayfish is a very popular dish of modern people, mainly produced in Xuyi, Jiangsu, Qianjiang, Hubei and other places. For a long time, there were almost zero people specializing in crayfish farming in Shangluo City. In 2017, Guo Haiyan, a villager in Zhangguo Village, Waishi Town, Shangzhou District, and his wife Song Shuhong established the Haihong Aquaculture Farmers Professional Cooperative to boldly try to cultivate crayfish, so that lobsters in Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province, crossed a distance of nearly 1,000 kilometers to settle in the hinterland of Qinling Mountains, and achieved good benefits, becoming a red-hot industry for villagers to continue to increase their income.
"Wear armor and dance long whiskers, and the sword carries a brave man with him." Mo Dao bounced every inch of the ground, and walked the rivers and lakes with pride. "Recently, the reporter walked into the crayfish breeding base in the Jiangshan Scenic Area of Waist Town, and such a text introduction was particularly eye-catching." Our two breeding bases produce 30,000 kilograms of crayfish per year, with an annual comprehensive output value of 1.6 million yuan, and this year we have put a total of 300,000 crayfish fry..." Next to the shrimp pond, Guo Haiyan, head of the Haihong Aquaculture Farmers Professional Cooperative, said that the breeding situation is like a family treasure.
From May to September every year, it is the season when the farm crayfish are fished and marketed, during which time they receive many orders every day, basically in short supply, and crayfish have become a hot commodity in the surrounding aquatic market and on the people's table. The city has held three consecutive crayfish fishing festivals, which has boosted the locally produced crayfish into the public eye, making it a special product of the city's aquatic market.

Merchants fishing for shrimp
In-depth research Boldly try to raise crayfish
Born in 1981, Guo Haiyan has been wandering around since 2003, during which time he became acquainted with Song Shuhong, a girl from Xuyi, Jiangsu Province. After several years of getting along, Guo Haiyan captured Song Shuhong's heart with the steadfastness and stability of the northern Hanzi, and the two harvested a happy love.
After marriage, Guo Haiyan and Song Shuhong still do small business in Jiangsu. In the Spring Festival of 2016, the couple returned to Shangluo for the New Year, and saw that the elderly in the family were deteriorating in health, and the children could not be well taken care of because of running around, they had the idea of ending their journey to the north. In 2017, they made up their minds to go home and develop.
"In those years, we ran many cities and villages across the country because of our business, and we also earned a lot of pocket money, but no matter how far you went, you could never get out of the worry about your hometown." Referring to that past experience, Guo Haiyan was overwhelmed with emotion.
After finishing the business you used to run, what do you rely on to make a living and get rich when you return to your hometown? This is the biggest conundrum in front of them. After returning to their hometown, the husband and wife concentrated on various planting and breeding industries, and looked around to find suitable projects.
"At that time, I thought about raising chickens, ducks, pigs, and flying squirrels, but after deep understanding, I felt that it was inappropriate, and then I almost planted shiitake mushrooms." Guo Haiyan said, "In order to grasp the cultivation and market sales of shiitake mushrooms, we inspected all the surrounding mushroom planting bases, and specially went to Guizhou to investigate, saw that the shiitake mushroom market was so good at that time, and worried that the market was saturated, sales would become a problem, entangled for a long time and finally gave up." ”
By chance, in a place in Guizhou, Guo Haiyan and his wife found a small pond in the form of four or five hundred acres of terraced fields, looked particularly beautiful, and went to chat with the people who worked, and learned that people raised crayfish. In the small talk, Guo Haiyan learned that crayfish is an omnivorous animal, with a small amount of food, easy to live, its adaptability is strong, there is a certain profit margin and other characteristics, so she came to be interested. Thinking that when the old man's family wanted to eat shrimp, he dug a ditch in front of the door, put some water, and casually threw in some aquatic grass to raise shrimp, and Guo Haiyan had the idea of raising shrimp.
Song Shuhong raised lobsters with her family when she was a child, knew lobster farming techniques, and supported her husband's idea of developing crayfish farming. After returning to their hometown, they visited Shangluo in depth and learned that the crayfish farming market in Shangluo and even Shaanxi was almost blank at that time, and the market space for crayfish was huge. So they decided to take the road of crayfish farming.
Struggling to stop the enthusiasm for entrepreneurship
Guo Haiyan and Song Shuhong visited the relevant experts of the municipal aquatic products department many times and sought the help of professional and technical personnel. Their ideas were strongly supported by the experts involved.
Jiangshan Scenic Area Crayfish Farm
Guo Haiyan also took soil and water quality samples and went to Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province, to ask professional and technical personnel to monitor water quality. After receiving a positive answer, the couple confidently began to prepare for the lobster farm.
However, just when Guo Haiyan and his wife were full of confidence, the voices of opposition around them were like a basin of cold water pouring down head-on. "So many capable people in Shaanxi have not successfully farmed crayfish, can you do it?" There are a lot of unsightly voices around, and some relatives and friends persuade them not to take this risk on the grounds that the market is not selling well.
"Now that you've made up your mind, you have to be bold and try." Guo Haiyan said that the opposition around him did not change their minds, but made him firmly confident that he would make some achievements. But you can't do it, you also need technical support. They found a professional technology company in Wuhan as a support and invited aquatic experts to provide on-site guidance. With the coordination and support of all parties, in 2017, Guo Haiyan invested more than 900,000 yuan in Zhangguo Village to build a pond of 25 mu and set up a professional cooperation with Haihong aquaculture farmers. Soon, their cooperative was included in one of the "Suzhou-Shaanxi Cooperation" poverty alleviation projects.
Just in July and August of that year, when the shrimp pond was halfway through construction, the old man at home had a serious stomach pain, and Guo Haiyan could only stop the project and take the old man to the hospital to see a doctor, and the results were found that the old man was seriously ill and needed to be removed. "Originally, part of the funds were loans, and after seeing the elderly, there was a gap in funds, and half of the selected industries were carried out, and they were in a dilemma." I felt that the sky was about to fall, I didn't know how to be good, fortunately my daughter-in-law was very strong, always around to encourage me, to support me, we borrowed money from friends and family, we got through the difficulties. Guo Haiyan said.
"Choosing shrimp fry without germs was a big problem in the initial farming." Guo Haiyan said, "The survival rate of shrimp fry without any germs is high, but most of the shrimp fry sold in the market are not raised in special shrimp fry ponds, but are cultivated in finished shrimp ponds, so that shrimp fry leave the original pond and are susceptible to infection with germs." ”
In order to find satisfactory shrimp fry, in March and April 2018, Guo Haiyan and his wife have been searching hard in Hubei and Jiangsu, and after many visits and recommendations from acquaintances, they finally selected shrimp fry from a farm in Xuyi, Jiangsu.
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Whether lobsters are good or not, the key is to see aquatic weeds. Aquatic plants can play a role in purifying water quality, keeping warm, shading, and providing habitat for lobsters when they are dehulled. The best aquatic grass is called Elezaos, also known as four seasons green, undefeated, is a submerged plant, rich in nutrients.
Guo Haiyan and aquatic experts searched all over the large and small canals in Shangzhou, but did not find this aquatic grass, so they bought three or four trucks from Hubei and returned to plant. "Many people think that lobsters are easy to live, and easy to live is just not dead, does not mean that they grow well and can grow." Guo Haiyan said, "Lobsters still have high requirements for water quality, in addition to using water plants to purify water quality, it is also necessary to regularly disinfect and sterilize the water in the pond without pollution." ”
Crayfish are nocturnal animals that come out at night. After the shrimp fry were put into the pond, Guo Haiyan patiently observed the life habits and activity rules of the shrimp fry almost every night and wrote them down in a small book. The time of lobster outflow activity varies with the season, weather, water quality, food consumption, and physical lesions. At first, Guo Haiyan did not understand these situations. 70% of the breeding techniques he learned through other means are not practical, he can only observe from time to time, and then slowly explore the problems found in the book, really do not understand the reason, he asked the aquatic experts for advice. After a period of time, he summed up a lot of breeding experience, made correct judgments about the problems that occurred, and responded to them in a timely manner.
Guo Haiyan casts feed in shrimp ponds
"When I first raised shrimp, I often woke up in the middle of the night and saw that my husband was not at home, and when I called, he was busy in the shrimp pond." Song Shuhong said, "At the beginning, my husband was under great psychological pressure, and he couldn't sleep every night worryingly, and from time to time he ran to the shrimp pond to see if there was anything unusual about the shrimp fry. Now, Guo Haiyan has thoroughly explored the habits, preferences and breeding rules of crayfish in combination with reality, and does not need to squat at night to observe the shrimp pond, and the problems encountered can basically be solved. ”
Shrimp farming is particularly hard, during the day to feed, fertilize water, weeding, every week to adjust the water quality of shrimp ponds. If you want the lobster to grow fast, you have to add another complementary food in the middle of the night. In order to ensure the original ecological quality of lobsters, they carefully matched high-quality feed, 25 acres of shrimp ponds, feeding once it takes four or five hours. Watching the shrimp fry grow day by day, the stones in the couple's hearts gradually fell. When it comes to the lobster fishing season, looking at the huge, bright red and clean crayfish, the couple is happy to blossom, even if they get up at dawn every day to catch shrimp and then send it to the customer's store, they don't feel tired.
Zhangguo Village has green mountains and water, birds and flowers, and a good ecological environment, providing a high-quality growth environment for lobster seedlings. Fertilizer water, weeding, selection of feed... In each aspect of breeding, Guo Haiyan and his wife have done a careful and careful job.
"Our farm takes the water of the Miaowan River as the source, and the shrimp raised are fat and have a good taste, which is welcomed by the market." In 2018, the output value of Guo Haiyan and his wife's lobster farm was more than 400,000 yuan, and their hard work was rewarded.
In 2019, after the first lobster fishing festival in Shangluo City was held in the farm, merchants near and far knew Guo Haiyan's farm, and the sales market was opened at once, and their lobsters were often in a state of "empty pond sales" and not enough to sell.
Seeing that the market is in short supply, in November 2020, Guo Haiyan built a second 25-acre shrimp pond in the jiangshan scenic spot. Nowadays, their cooperative has developed into a comprehensive aquaculture enterprise integrating aquaculture, leisure, sightseeing and catering relying on the scenic area of Jiangshan.
During the crayfish fishing season, Guo Haiyan and Song Shuhong enjoy the joy of harvesting.
Rich and Thinking of the Source Of Prosperity do not forget the villagers
One point of hard work, one point of harvest. Guo Haiyan and Song Shuhong and their husband and wife have gone away because of the story of the development of lobster farming in a thousand miles of marriage, which has aroused social concern for a while. Their business is getting better and better, and their little days are getting more and more prosperous, but they are rich and think of the source.
"Song Shuhong and his wife take good care of us, I cook for the workers at the base, I don't have to go out to work, I can earn more than 2,000 yuan a month at the doorstep of my home, and I can also take care of the elderly and children." Zhou Ailing, a villager who helps cook in the Haihong Aquaculture Farmers Professional Cooperative, said that her work is very easy, in addition to cooking, she will also make some farmhouse snacks to sell in the Jiangshan Scenic Area in her spare time, her husband is also working in the breeding base, and the two people work in the base with an annual income of more than 30,000 yuan.
At present, the breeding base of Haihong Aquaculture Farmers Professional Cooperative absorbs 30 local villagers to work nearby, with an annual per capita income of more than 7500 yuan. The cooperative also attracted some young people from other places to come to learn from the experience, and Guo Haiyan and his wife always passed on the shrimp farming technology and breeding experience to everyone without reservation. Nowadays, Luonan, Zaoshui and other places have successively set up crayfish breeding bases.
The crayfish farming business is on the right track, and Guo Haiyan and his wife are full of confidence. Talking about the future development of the lobster industry, Guo Haiyan said that when the village cadres were replaced, the villagers elected him as the deputy branch secretary of the village, and he will continue to expand the scale, planning to circulate more than 100 acres of land in Banqiao Town, carry out the demonstration of comprehensive rice and shrimp breeding mode, and gradually form a crayfish breeding base centered on Zhangguo Village in The Waist Town of Shangzhou District and radiating the seven counties of Shangluo, promote the synchronous development of the Shangluo crayfish industry and global tourism, absorb more labor employment, and let the lives of fathers and fellow villagers flourish like crayfish... Reporter Yu Ting