Feeding animals once a week, the western guy earns tens of thousands of dollars/per year
With this “leisure” animal model, Mr. Khanh spends almost no time taking care of him, only feeding once a
7 years ago, Mr. Phan Thanh Binh (37 years old, in Soc Trang) switched from business to raising cobras. With a snake farming area of only 400m2, he earns more than half a billion dong per year.
Fail but don’t give up
Mr. Binh’s snake farm is located in My Loi C hamlet, My Tu commune, My Tu district, Soc Trang province. Mr. Binh said that before he was a self-employed person, around 2014 he switched to raising animals such as baba, mink, crab and cobra in small quantities.
The cobra was bought by Mr. Binh from people who specialize in catching snakes in the wild. Each time he bought a few dozen animals and then released them in the same cage so that they could live in symbiosis with each other. At first, snakes died quite a lot. When finding out the cause, Mr. Binh “discovered” that he raised the wrong way.
“I let the male and female snakes mix, release dozens of them in a too-small area, causing snakes to bite each other, compete for food leading to a lot of loss. In addition, keeping too much in captivity makes the snake’s cage dirty quickly and easily. pathogens,” explained Mr. Binh.
Having learned from his first loss, he switched to raising snakes in separate cages, spending time learning about snake behavior so that they wouldn’t be stressed when raised in an artificial environment.
Because of his passion for “snake”, even though he suffered a loss, he did not give up. Although other livestock such as crabs and ferrets still make a profit, Mr. Binh decided to sell all the breeding stock and switch the whole farm to raising cobras.
According to the farm owner, raising cobras is not difficult, but you must know how to build a barn and monitor the snake’s health status.
Snake cages must be built of solid bricks, including standing or lying cages, but must have a net and lock carefully to prevent snakes from crawling and ensure safety for farmers. The place where the snake lives must be dry, cool, not leaking water, ensuring a stable temperature of 30-32 degrees Celsius.
“The baby snakes are kept in cages of about 2m2, the number of about 50 children. Particularly large snakes must be kept separately, the length of the cage is 1m, the width of 40cm”, Mr. Binh added.
Low cost, high profit
Cobras raised for about 2 years can mate and reproduce. Snakes mate once a year, the mating time starts from the 9th lunar month, and the mating time is about a week. A female snake can lay 25 eggs. Each time the snake lays, Mr. Binh will collect it and then incubate it in an artificial environment for 60 days, then the eggs will hatch, and the hatching rate is 90-95%.
Cobras are quite economical to raise because they only eat once every 5 days. The snake’s food is mainly live animals such as ducks, chicks, fish, frogs, frogs, etc. It takes about 7-10 days to fill up water for snakes to drink. In each snake cage, more dry soil should be added to allow the snakes to clean in that area. Every day Mr. Binh will check the cage to get the skin that the snakes shed.
According to the farm owner, the environment in the West is very suitable for raising cobras because the weather is hot, so the snake’s hibernation time is shorter than in the northern provinces. Each year, he only let the snakes hibernate for more than a month. At the end of hibernation, he will feed the snakes about 5-6 times before mating begins.
Currently, Mr. Binh has built a 400m2-wide cobra farming facility with more than 1,500 snake cages, which can accommodate 10,000 seed and commercial snakes.
Breeding snakes that reach the size of a finger can be sold for between 100,000 and 200,000 VND/head. Particularly, snake meat of more than 2kg is purchased for 700,000 VND/kg. In addition, Mr. Binh also provides snake venom used in the production of Oriental medicine.
Thanks to boldly increasing the herd and having a suitable farming process, since 2017 Mr. Binh has started supplying meat snakes and snakes to the market. Total income per year, after deducting all expenses, he pocketed 600 million VND or more.
(Dan Tri)
