"Specialist poultry farming such as peacocks, ostriches, and golden pheasants lacks scientific planning and the classification is incomplete.

There is a lack of disinfection and disease prevention at hatcheries and farms. Outside actors are free to visit these places, which is likely to cause safety problems. There is a high incidence of disease in the spring-summer transition period, which also happens to be breeding season for peacocks and other species of poultry. In this critical period, we must do a good job in disease prevention and keep the environment clean, quiet, and comfortable..."

Recently, expert team providing entrepreneurial guidance to rural college students of Hunan Radio and TV University (Hunan RTVU) visited Xianggang Precious Poultry Breeding Professional Cooperative (located in Wangcheng District, Changsha City) and Xulan Peacock Breeding Professional Cooperative (located in Ziyang District, Yiyang City). They offered guidance to the directors of the Cooperatives and guided entrepreneurial farmers on how to raise rare birds. This cooperation between school and enterprise has promoted the integration of production, education, and research, resolving some of the problems faced by the agricultural industry in the new era.

Xianggang Precious Poultry Breeding Professional Cooperative (located in Wangcheng District, Changsha City) and Xulan Peacock Breeding Professional Cooperative (located in Ziyang District, Yiyang City) are the entrepreneurial centres of Zeng Junjie and Guo Chunsheng respectively. They both enrolled in the “Rural College Student Training Programme” in 2017 and they majored in Administration Management and Agricultural Economic Management respectively. In the process of entrepreneurship, with the new changes to rural agriculture development and the expansion of special poultry farming, they faced many problems such as industrial transformation, technological breakthroughs, and operation and sales. When it learned about this situation, the Rural College Student Learner Support Service organised for experts and professors from Hunan Agricultural University, the Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and relevant departments of Hunan RTVU, as well as experts in specialist poultry farming, rural e-commerce, and online technology from the Yiyang Branch to visit the entrepreneurial centre to address the problems on site.

Focusing on the issues such as how to make good use of the resources of the industry and universities and how to develop agriculture in the Internet+ era, the expert team held a heated discussion. In the face of the practical difficulties and problems facing the rural college students’ in their entrepreneurship, they answered questions patiently and offered meticulous guidance.

In view of the existing production technology and traditional single marketing model of the specialist poultry farming professional cooperatives, Professor Peng Ying, director of the Rural College Student Learner Support Service Department, proposed that they make use of circular agriculture, establish the concept of creative agriculture development, and adopt Internet+ thinking to promote the "four transformations”: 1.Transforming from single farming to multiple coordination such as growing, raising, processing, and sales, and integrating primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, 2. Transforming from mostly offline marketing to blended online and offline marketing, 3. Transforming from production-oriented to consumer-oriented, 4. Transforming from single-region family operation to inter-regional coalition cooperation based on market forecasts.

Professor Peng Yi, director of the Department of Finance Trade and Economics, pointed out that what the cooperatives lack is government support, long-term planning, teamwork, and research. She said that teachers and students from the Department of Finance Trade and Economics will help to guide the development of the cooperatives. Wang Tianlong, a teacher from the e-commerce major, put forward proposals from a technical perspective such as product system, platform construction, and brand establishment via the official website.

Professor Zhang Bin, a specialist poultry breeding expert from Hunan Agricultural University, believes that the cooperative should look to local conditions and market demand in choosing to raise rare birds such as peacocks and ostriches. Developing specialist agriculture is a bold and wise choice. He pointed out that in order to succeed in specialist poultry breeding, you must do all kinds of disease prevention work plan the raising area and viewing areas scientifically, so that the classification of the species is accurate, the populations are kept separately, and inbreeding can be avoided.

Finally, the expert team offered guidance on matters such as cooperative vision, brand website construction, product series design, marketing planning, and logistics. Experts Peng Ying and Peng Yi, and Wang Tianlong and his students, set up an assistance relationship with Zeng Junjie and Guo Chunsheng. They helped the RTVU rural college students and on-campus vocational college students to cooperate, learn from each other's strengths, and make progress together.

The entrepreneurial rural college students found reassurance in the guidance of the expert team. "In the future, no matter what difficulties I encounter, I can always find a mentor. I am really happy to be an RTVU student,” Guo Chunsheng said. He added that he believes that, with the guidance of experts, the technical content of specialist poultry farming and the sales performance of its products are bound to make a qualitative leap.

At present, the number of cooperatives that are certified by the provincial school as rural college student entrepreneurial bases like Xianggang Precious Poultry Breeding Professional Cooperative and Xulan Peacock Breeding Professional Cooperative has reached 30. According to the head of the Rural College Student Learner Support Service, during the process of base cultivation, the entrepreneurial guidance expert team at the provincial, municipal, and county level has formed a interactive, cooperative relationship. In future, the OUC will further exercise the role of the expert team in technology promotion, brand packaging, event planning, e-commerce operation, and research projects, of support for the rural college students’ entrepreneurship at any time and in any place.

By Hunan RTVU