Training and grooming chickens brings fortune to farmer

Yang Changxia, a farmer in Guizhou province, holds a chicken after bathing and grooming it. [A screenshot from a China News Service video]

Having breakfast, running, flying across a cliff, bathing and putting on essential oil - this is the life of chickens at a mountainous area in Southwest China's Guizhou province, eastday.com reported.

Farmer Yang Changxia is a coach for chickens – and after her training, the birds go on to sell like hotcakes. While her efforts have brought Yang fame in her hometown of Tongren city, success didn't come easy.

When she was 13 years old, Yang went to Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong province to make a living. After 10 years of hard work, she had a shoe factory worth 1 million yuan ($148,000).

But at 27, her husband died and the factory went bankrupt. What's worse, she was diagnosed with cancer one year later. When she went back home with her daughter to fight the disease, she started her life over again by raising chickens.

"I didn't put all my thoughts on the disease and the bankruptcy because of the new business," said Yang. "I just thought tomorrow would be better than today."

At first, she tried to raise the chickens to grow as big and fat as possible, but later found the meat became too greasy. So she thought of training the chickens so their meat would taste better.

When the quality of the meat improved, she also considered how to make them appear better to win clients, coming up with the idea of grooming them. She would wash their feathers with shampoo and conditioner, dry them with a hair dryer and put on essential oil, which made their feathers look glossy.

Her chickens, which have become popular in the market, can sell for 150 yuan ($22) each.

In 2004, she initiated a cooperative at her village to train farmers in raising chickens, which would allow the farmers to earn 20,000 to 30,000 yuan every year.

Yang said she planned to pay back to those who had lent her a hand by sending them chicken soup every morning.