Many youth union members in Phu Giao district, with their aspiration, get rich legitimately, increase income for their families, and actively contribute to the construction of a new rural area of their locality. Ho Hoang Hieu (Bau Cam hamlet, An Long commune) is one of such young people, who constantly strives to develop agricultural economy and succeed with the model of raising swiflets, mushroom cultivation, gains annual profit of VND1 billion.
Ho Hoang Hieu introduces his sound system to attract swiftlets nesting.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Ho Hoang Hieu’s house raising swiftlets for nesting has a total floor area of 400m2, equivalent to a house with 1 ground floor and 3 floors; he equipped the house with sound devices that simulate the sound of swiftlets to attract swiftlets nesting here. Hieu took out his phone, turned on the flashlight to light the way, go deeper inside, sometimes stopped to shine the light on some places on wall, on corner of the ceiling where swiftlets built their nests to see clearly...
Due to the sound of footsteps and lights, the swiftlets on its nest startled and fluttered. Hieu said that to invest in a swiftlet house with a floor area of 400m2 like this, it costs about 1 billion VND. Although the initial construction cost is large, in return, if done well and successfully, it will only take a few years to recover investment capital.
Hieu recalled the early days as starting his swiftlet farming and facing many difficulties and hardships. After graduating from university with a business administration degree, during 2012-2015, Hieu worked at an e-commerce platform with a salary of more than 20 million VND/month. However, this erratic work made Ho Hoang Hieu wonder what to do to create a stable income and build a sustainable future.
Ho Hoang Hieu said that a few years ago, he was fortunate enough to meet and talk with a friend who successfully built a house to raise swiftlets to get nests. That meeting motivated him to learn experience and start his own business. After learning about farming techniques as well as building, repairing, and renovating houses into swiftlet houses in many months, in 2016, Hieu decided to build a swiftlet house. Hieu said, despite his experience, as realizing this model, he encountered many difficulties, even failures. But with his effort and determination to overcome difficulties, failures were valuable lessons, from which Hieu drew experience and had solutions to overcome limitations.
“In order to have a successful swiftlet house, it is a combination of many factors, such as the swiftlet farming area, the technique of building the raw part of the swiftlet house, the technology of attracting swiftlets, the technique of taking care of the swiftlet house... In particular, the design and construction techniques of the raw part of the house must meet three important factors, which are: the sun is not hot, the rain is not noisy, the convection is clear. In addition, factors such as brightness, height, and waterproofing are also very important," Hieu shared.
Hieu gained initial successes with swiftlet farming and is supplying the market with raw bird's nests, refined bird's nests, and bird's nest drink with chia seeds. Bird's nest is a healthy food, so it is now favored and used by many consumers.
Enormous income
Not stopping at the initial success, Hieu always cherishes a plan to expand and develop his swiftlet farming. In order to find a financial resource for this plan, Hieu actively searched, and directly built, repaired, and renovated swiftlet houses for households inside and outside the province. At the same time, he also learned more about mushroom farming to increase income. However, the mushroom cultivation model failed immediately, due to the lack of techniques, incorrect care process, and unwell embryos. Being undeterred, Hieu researched and learned everywhere, determined to start over; took failure as a motivation to learn more techniques of mushroom cultivation...
“The most important thing in growing mushrooms is to overcome the weather. Mushrooms often get sick because the weather is not suitable for growth, common diseases in fungi are mainly caused by invasion of other fungal viruses”, Hieu learned from experience. From the accumulated knowledge and experience, he found the secret to growing mushrooms with high yield, embryos successfully grown up. Due to high demand of the market, he is currently focusing on growing gray abalone mushrooms, reishi... According to Hieu, gray abalone mushroom is one of the difficult mushroom varieties to take care of but has advantages of being easy to eat, delicious, nutritious and its price is average, thus it is very popular with consumers, especially vegetarians. Currently, Hieu's mushroom farm is equipped with an automatic bagging line, an autoclave, an incubator, a nursery, and a mushroom farming house according to VietGAP process applying modern science and technology. Therefore, his products supplied to the market are guaranteed to be 100% clean.
From the desire to get rich righteously, Hieu continued to succeed with the model of mushroom farming, with a total area of nearly 1,000m2, with a daily output of 100-150kg of mushrooms supplied to the market. Selling price of mushrooms on weekdays is from 32,000 - 40,000 VND/kg; on full moon days, especially in lunar July, mushrooms can be sold for more than 45,000 - 50,000 VND/kg. From two models of growing mushrooms and raising swiftlets, after deducting investment expenses, Hieu annually earns from VND 800 million to VND 1 billion.
Reported by Do Trong - Translated by Ngoc Huynh
