"I'll give you 7,000 yuan a month. My daily job is to feed pigs, sweep manure, pick up rotten pigs, and use dangerous chemical disinfectants... Can you accept it?"

The piglet in the delivery room. Photo provided by the interviewee

basketball court in the living area of ​​the pig farm. Photo provided by the interviewee

The place where Li Di took a bath while in the pig house. Photo provided by the interviewee

Li Di is preparing to give the pig an injection. Photo provided by the interviewee

with Huaihe. Photo provided by the interviewee

"I will give you 7,000 yuan a month. My daily work is to feed pigs, sweep manure, pick up rotten pigs, and use dangerous chemical disinfectants... Can you accept it?" 8 days after

, 24-year-old Zhang Yao wrote this question on a social network platform.

In September last year, Zhang Yao graduated from a graduate student in food engineering from a university. He missed the recruitment of the counterpart enterprises, and after consideration, he took over the invitation from a "management trainee" position in an agricultural and animal husbandry enterprise.

This is a relatively high-paying job, including food and accommodation, with an annual salary of 180,000 yuan for graduate students. In 2018, African swine fever was introduced to China, and the number of pigs in China decreased sharply, and pork prices rose sharply. Pig farming companies such as Zhengbang Group , Wen's shares , Muyuan shares and other pig farms have expanded their breeding scale and expanded new farms. In order to meet the needs of modern breeding, they have widely recruited college students.

This job has a high salary and good salary, but there is no glamorous working environment, and the work content is even less easy.

recruitment notice clearly states that rural children are preferred. Some people were stopped by their families after being hired, and some people went into the pig house to shovel pig shit for an hour and decided to "run away". Some people who persisted sincerely persuaded them to retreat online: "If you can't stand loneliness, can't stand coldness, can't endure hardship, and can't adjust your mindset, be careful."

1

In July last year, after graduating from computer major, Li Di came to a pig farm located in Yingde, Qingyuan, Guangdong to report.

The reason why he attracted him to the pig farm was money. Last summer, an agricultural and animal husbandry enterprise issued recruitment notices in many universities, targeting full-time college graduates from 2019 to 2021, recruiting management trainees, breeding production technology and management, animal husbandry engineering, feed marketing and other positions. Most positions need to start from front-line pig farming. Salary includes basic salary, year-end bonus, job bonus, equity , etc. The comprehensive salary for undergraduate students in the first year of employment is 120,000 to 200,000 yuan, master's degree is 180,000 to 300,000 yuan, and doctoral degree is 300,000 yuan.

Li Di graduated from a non-key undergraduate college in Guangzhou. He thought that his grades were not good enough and his employment environment was affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic. The salary offered by a small Internet company in Guangzhou was less than 3,000 yuan per month. In comparison, pig farming jobs with a basic salary of 6,000 yuan and food and accommodation are too attractive.

The career development space of pig farming also made him excited. In order to train college students, Li Di's company launched the "180 Training Plan". In 180 days, through theoretical learning and practical teaching, he can be promoted from a breeder to a technician, group leader, and branch manager, and steadily achieve promotion and salary increase.

When Li Di was a child, he raised pigs at home and he knew the smell. Before entering the market, the old employee joked that he would be "pickled and tasted" after staying in the pig house for a long time, and that the smell of pig manure could no longer be washed away, and that when going out to take the bus, he would smoke others far away.

entered the pig farm, and Li Di found that the modern pig house here was completely different from the pigpens you had seen in the countryside. Each pig house covers an area of ​​800 to 900 square meters. The positioning bars with a length of 2 meters, a width of 0.65 meters and a height of 1 meter are arranged 6 rows between the aisles, with each pig being one by one, and more than 300 pigs were neatly marked. Each pig has ear tags nailed to its ears, marked with serial numbers, and each string of numbers corresponds to an exclusive file of the information management system.

is different from "taking a scoop of pig food" at home. The automated feeding system allows Li Di to distribute feed from more than 40 pigs at one time. The smell of the pig farm was also better than he expected. The ground is covered with leaking slabs, which will not accumulate pig urine. The pig house is equipped with a negative pressure fan and a water curtain that cools down by evaporation of water to absorb heat. The temperature is controlled at around 20 degrees Celsius, the humidity does not exceed 70%, and the air is circulating. As long as you don't stand in the lower vent, the taste will not be too big.

Deng Yuheng, who works in a pig farm in Hunan, also decided to raise pigs in order to make money. He studied communications engineering in college, and after graduating in 2019, he was "always confused."He jumped from the construction machinery manufacturing industry to a state-owned enterprise that goes from eight to four, and resigned and went home to prepare for the civilian position in the army. After a few months of unemployment, the salary I had saved before was only a few thousand yuan. As the pressure of life became more and more intense, he finally decided to raise pigs and save some money.

He is mentally prepared to "end hardship". In a game session of military training before joining the job, the leader brought two large bags of pig manure and asked everyone to dig 250 grams and put them in a paper box. The closest weight wins. Newcomers in the workplace can choose from three ways: small shovel, wearing gloves and bare hands. Wearing gloves allows for an error of 10 grams and bare hands allows for an error of 20 grams.

Deng Yuheng regards this as the first level of pig farming. "As a person who wants to raise pigs in the future, how can you be afraid of this?" He chose bare hands without hesitation.

Sure enough, after entering the pig farm to work, he had to deal with pig manure every day.

While the pigs were eating and drinking water, Deng Yuheng needed to quickly use a feces rake to scatter the feces in the pig pen into the aisle, and sweep them into the feces tank below through the feces holes on the leaking plate.

Experienced breeders can understand the health status of pigs through the shape of pig manure. Small particles may cause constipation, and if it is too thin, it may cause inflammation.

patrol is also one of the daily tasks. Deng Yuheng never thought that he would pay attention to the pig's eyes one day. Once he found that the pig had no eyes, dull fur color, and lost appetite, he would mark it, take a temperature measurement, and then prescribe the right medicine.

Once, he was preparing to take the temperature of the pig without food. As soon as the thermometer was inserted into the pig's anus, the pig suddenly felt diarrhea and the feces sprayed him with his leg.

"Human adaptability is very strong." Li Di sighed. When he first entered the pig house, he followed the farm leader through the aisle in the middle of the pig pen. Pig heads kept arching out on both sides, rubbing saliva against his pants. He carefully curled up on the middle line of the aisle, and he "freaked" when he was touched by a pig.

The patrol bar walked dozens of times a day. He could walk through the pigs calmly, touching the pig's nose from time to time, "I feel that those pigs are like tables, chairs and benches at home."

2

Unlike fattening farms that sell pigs, the pig farms where Li Di and Deng Yuheng are both breeding farms that mainly raise sows and produce piglets. There are cottages, childbirth houses, reserve houses and boar stations on the field.

Here, the sow is a veritable "birth machine". Their job is to conceive and give birth in a cycle of 142 days, receive breeding after estrus, give birth to piglets after 114 days of pregnancy, and wean them after 28 days of delivery. Generally, within one week after weaning, the sows can go into heat again and then enter the next breeding cycle. The relatively narrow positioning bar prevents the sow from turning around and moving freely, avoiding fighting and collision, and can only raise the fetus quietly.

After three or four years of childbirth, the sows that are over-age will be replaced by young reserve sows. Overage pigs and pigs that have not been in heat for one or two consecutive months will be eliminated from the breeding farm as pigs. Because they have been born piglets, their meat is not tight and the price is relatively cheap.

These sows will never have a chance of natural mating throughout their lives. There are two or three boars in each house. They are tall and powerful, have a lot of saliva and have a strong smell, but the sows can only see them.

In order to induce sows to estrus as soon as possible, Li Di would rush the boars to walk slowly outside the sow pen, and at most let them communicate with each other with mouth to mouth. Two or three boars will take turns to fight so that the sow will not experience aesthetic fatigue.

Pig riding is a necessary skill for working in the maid. Li Di wants to simulate the movements of a boar and ride the sow. After confirming that the sow was in heat, he transported the bags of boar semen taken from the boar station to the sow's reproductive tract, and completed artificial insemination .

On the fourth day to the end of the birth, the washed pregnant sow will be rushed to the delivery room, also known as the delivery room. "It is equivalent to the obstetrics and gynecology department of the hospital." said Zhang Yao, who works in a pig farm delivery house in Hubei. The delivery bed here is spacious than the positioning bar in the maid house. The sows can lie on their side and feed them. The positioning rack of the delivery bed is equipped with a bar to prevent the pig from being crushed to death or being stepped on by the sow. The temperature in the delivery room is kept at 25-28 degrees Celsius, and it is equipped with insulation lamps and hot air fan and .In order to prevent the pig from catching a cold, wooden boards must be laid on the leaking slits to block the cool air in the septic tank.

Zhang Yao became a midwife of the sow after coming to the pig farm. A sow usually gives birth to more than a dozen piglets in one child, which takes 3-4 hours. Zhang Yao has seen 34 births in one child. When a sow is difficult to give birth, especially if the first child is difficult to give birth, Zhang Yao will step on the sow's belly to help it. Sometimes the sow has no strength or the piglet has died in the mother's womb, and he has to reach out to take out the piglet.

His work also includes postpartum care for sows, cleaning up dirt and blood, disinfecting, giving anti-inflammatory injections, and feeding health care medicines. In order to "food qi and strengthen the foundation" for the sows, he also mixed motherwort into their feed.

The piglet was weaned more than 20 days after birth, and the sows in the delivery room were driven back to the maternity house for the next round of estrus and breeding.

3

1 Young people follow the master. It is not difficult to get started with the daily work of the pig farm, but it is common for them to get injured and get rid of lottery.

"When picking up manure, be sure to hold the manure rake obliquely, and the speed should be fast." Li Di said. The most serious situation he had ever heard of was that when a breeder elder sister was cleaning pig manure, the sow suddenly kicked backwards, and the handle of the manure rake broke the elder sister's ribs.

Deng Yuheng has met several times. The sow knocked the pen and ran to the aisle for a walk. Some pigs turned around in the pen and turned their butts to the material trough. Once, a pig trying to escape from prison jumped halfway and got stuck on the railing. His colleague went to rescue him. The pig became irritable and kicked a piece of bruise out of his colleague's stomach.

Deng Yuheng likes to drive pigs between the maid and the delivery house. Several people held the baffle and drove a group of pigs in a mighty way. It is a "decompression fitness exercise combining multiple elements such as parkour , hitting, and collision." Even this job that is recognized as the most lively and fun, it is difficult to avoid the risk of being stepped on by a sow of two or three hundred pounds.

It is difficult to give pigs injections. Li Di sometimes injects antibacterial and anti-inflammatory drugs such as penicillin, aminobiline, , and other anti-inflammatory drugs to the sows on the back of their ears. The sow shook his head and the needle would leave a scratch on his right ring finger. Because of repeated scratches, the wound has not healed for a long time.

Sometimes the pigs are injured. Deng Yuheng once gave a pig three times in a row. The first time I hit it in, the pig struggled and the needle tilted. The second time the potion was not injected, the syringe was locked, and it was not finished until the third time. Every time the pig was given an injection and he could feel that he and the pig were panicked. Later, he made up his mind and decided to practice more: "It's not that I'm hitting myself, what are you afraid of!" The dangers in the pig farm also come from sodium hydroxide . It is commonly known as caustic soda . It is a cheap and easy-to-use sterilization and disinfection product, and is corrosive to the skin. Pig houses have high requirements for disinfection, and they need to spray caustic soda water in the aisle at a ratio of 3%, or sprinkle a thin layer of caustic soda directly. Once exposed skin touches it, it will feel burning and you have to rinse it with water immediately. "You must wear water boots. If you walk directly into the aisle, your feet will be gone." Li Di said.

Even if you wear goggles, glue gloves and other protective gears when using caustic soda, people are often injured by it. Someone took a photo of a colleague entering the eyes of caustic soda and wanted to pass the photo to the social platform, "because the picture is too bloody", it failed to pass the censorship.

has some work, which is not dangerous but unacceptable. Zhang Yao also had to kill while delivering his baby. Some piglets are born thin and cannot grab milk, or take medicine and injections after they get sick and will not work, and they will be disposed of.

This process is cruel. At the beginning, Zhang Yao stepped on the pig's head with the heel of the long rubber shoes until they did not move again. Although he has been killing chickens at home since he was a child, he still feels a little unbearable. Later, he learned a less intuitive method from his colleagues, first carrying the pig out of dizziness, and then stuffing it into the bag.

In addition to this, in the pig farm, an unavoidable job is to clean up the body.

Li Di once took care of a sow with paralyzed hind limbs. He mixed the feed with water and fed it with a shovel bite into his mouth. A month later, it actually stood up. Such miracles are rare. Most of the time, the breeder can only watch the pigs that do not eat food become thinner and the injections are not effective. Finally, he dies in the pen with a skinny skin.

The first thing to do is to sample the mouth, nose and anus of the dead pig, leave it for testing, then put the pig on it with a wire rope, transport it to the corpse-dissolving pond by a small trailer, and disinfect the aisles and railings. Sometimes, the body of a dead pig will turn green and yellow, and the stomach and intestines will rot and ferment and produce gas, making the stomach bloated and may explode at any time. Be extra careful when dragging the dead pig.

In the delivery room with higher temperatures, Zhang Yao's work on collecting corpses is even more difficult. Some of them came out of the pen and died in the corner of the wall where they were not noticed. When they were found two days later, their bodies had rotted.

"The corpse of the pig farm is a mixture of rotten and sour smell." Zhang Yao described the smell as more "sour and refreshing" than the freezer he brushed in school with rotten maggot pork.

The newly dead pig is the best to pick it up and you can pick it up and put it in a bag. When it rots to a certain extent, it may break into two sections when picked up. Some rot into pieces and turn into a pile of slags and stick to the ground, and will be scattered by other piglets.

Zhang Yao had to rest for a while. It took nearly an hour to pick up the body clean. He would even retching on the way to the pig house after get off work.

4

From a certain perspective, the relatively high salary of pig farm work is exchanged for freedom.

When I first reported, Li Di took the high-speed train from Guangzhou to Qingyuan , transferred to the town by bus, and took another motorcycle to the pig farm "in the valley". Due to epidemic prevention and control and environmental needs, pig farms are often located in remote places and maintain a certain distance from traffic trunk lines and residential areas.

Pig farm itself is also a closed environment. It took Li Di five or six days from arriving at the guard room to entering the pig house to meeting the pig. After detecting the African swine fever virus, he had to undergo three layers of cleaning and isolation, and was naked and underwent full disinfection for 180 seconds. After taking a shower, he changed into disinfected clothes in the pig farm. His mobile phone, computer and other electronic products were disinfected with alcohol and ozone.

In various isolation points and functional areas in the pig farm, staff wear work clothes of different colors, and work clothes of one color can only move in the area corresponding to that color. You have to take a bath when entering and leaving the pig house production area, and Deng Yuheng has washed it up to 6 times a day.

Meat products, dairy products and foods with high oil content cannot be brought into the market. The chocolate, biscuits and egg yolk crisps and bought by Deng Yuheng were burned because they contained milk powder. When Zhang Yao was on vacation, the first thing he did was to eat spicy strips crazy.

is not easy to take a vacation. Although the pig farm stipulates that it takes 4 days of leave per month, and when it comes back after leaving the pig farm, it takes another five or six days to clean and quarantine, everyone usually works for three or four months and takes more than 10 days of leave once. In addition, the pig farm has a monthly closing fee of 800 yuan and a full attendance prize of 200 yuan. Going out means giving up these incomes.

Li Di is glad that he is a "home" and has "no desires and no desires" for urban life, so he can hold it in. Before coming to the pig farm, his hobby was cooking and watching TV series, and the game was "nothing to fight". The living area of ​​the pig farm is equipped with a basketball court, a table tennis table, an pool table, and other facilities. After getting off work at 6 or 7 o'clock in the evening, everyone can play ball and relieve boredom. It is easy to save money in the pig farm, and toothbrushes, toothpaste, toiletries, quilts, and work clothes are all provided in the farm. Shampoo and shower gel are common "two-in-one" products in Express Hotels. After washing, the hair is dry and astringent. Except for the Fund that was lost in Alipay , it does not spend much. The most extreme case of

being closed in a pig farm is being quarantined in a pig house. When encountering epidemic prevention and control, people cannot go back to their living areas to rest, they can only bring a mobile phone, eat, drink, defecate, urinate, sleep and stay with the pigs, and they will not see the sun for many days. Three meals a day are delivered to the door of the pig house. Li Di eats every day by listening to the pig's chirping and mixing with the smell of pig's shit. Wash the work clothes by yourself and dry them under the fan, which will bring a faint smell of pig manure.

Li Di lived in the pig house for more than two months. When the conditions were poor, he directly put a wooden board on the empty pig pen to sleep. Later, he had an iron bed, which could be moved to the aisle and kept a little distance from the pig. Even so, he had to move the rubber shoes to the bottom of the bed when he was sleeping, otherwise the urine that splashed when the pig urinated and drowned would splash on his shoes.

After eating, the pig slept better than the human.As long as Li Di doesn't quarrel at the pig, all that will accompany him at night is the sound of the fan running and the sound of the ups and downs of more than 300 sows.

After using the quick heat rod to boil a bucket of water, Li Di took a shower and went to the aisle behind the pig. The left side faced a row of pig butts, and the right side was also a row of pig butts. Sometimes, he can find a bath compartment for himself. There is a large pen in the pig house, which is used to make the sick pig "hospits" alone. When there are no pigs who are sick, Li Di puts himself in and takes a shower.

has higher technical requirements for toilet use. Zhang Yao’s skill is “spreading water”. Use a feces rake to open the leaking slit. If the water in the feces tank is deep, he has to squat half-squat and stick out his butt and shit gently, otherwise the sow and pig's feces and urine will be splashed. The choice of timing of

is also very important. It is safe to lie down. Once Zhang Yao sees a pig standing up around him, he must be ready to lift his pants and move his seat at any time.

5

The traditional pig farming model mainly focuses on feeding and feeding pigs, and the breeder has a low level of education. Under the threat of African swine fever and other diseases, the pig farming industry has increasingly demanded infrastructure and epidemic prevention and control, and pig farms that do not meet the technology standards have to withdraw from the market.

According to the "National Pig Industry Development Plan (2016-2025)" released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs , the pig farming industry will continue to promote standardized large-scale breeding and develop towards industrial Internet, ecological breeding and other aspects. The pig industry has entered the stage of modern breeding, and the fundamental driving force of development is technology. Relying solely on the technology and experience of the older generation can no longer meet the needs of scientific breeding, and major pig breeding companies have begun to focus on highly educated talents.

In 2019, Muyuan Group recruited "elite management trainees" at Fudan University , and offered a monthly salary of 20,000 yuan for undergraduate students and 22,000 yuan for master students per month. In 2020, Zhengbang Group also recruited 25,000 college students nationwide.

Data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs shows that China's pork production ranks first in the world. China is not only a major pork consumer and a major pig farming country.

There are not only special pig breeding companies involved in pig farming. Since NetEase CEO 7 Ding Lei announced pig farming in 2009, giants such as Wanda , Evergrande , Vanke and other Vanke have successively set up "pig farms", and Wuhan Iron and Steel Group and Shanxi Coking Coal have also participated in cross-border ticketing. In recent years, " pet pig " has also become popular. A merchant bought Bama Xiangzhu cubs with pink and black, and opened a "pig-fighting restaurant" in the mall.

When he was in the pig farm for more than a month, Deng Yuheng chatted with a female high school classmate. The other party was a civil servant in the city and asked what he was doing. Deng Yuheng was stunned and said, "I'm working."

"The viewpoint at that time was still a bit narrow." He recalled. He felt embarrassed about the work in the pig farm. In addition to his family, he only told a friend who had a good relationship in college.

Li Di understands this feeling. He didn't even tell his parents that he was raising pigs. Every time he contacted him by phone, he always said, "I am very good at the construction site, don't worry, you have enough money."

Parents expect him to become a teacher. They envy the stability of the teaching profession, with weekends and winter and summer vacations. Li Di knew that in the eyes of his parents, raising pigs is a discriminated undertaking, and he did not want to spend time explaining the technical application and management model of modern pig farms.

A few days ago, a doctoral paper from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which became popular all over the Internet, resonated with him. "The sufferings behind people can still be overcome, and the dignity before people is extremely fragile." This sentence is particularly in line with Li Di's mood at that time. He felt that he needed to have a certain amount of economic strength to survive in society with greater peace of mind, and the feeling of not being able to make him panic. In order to make money, it is not a problem to suffer much hardship in the pig farm, but I don’t really want my family to know.

However, the "bottom line" of making money is to castrate the piglet. According to the original career promotion path, he had to go from being pregnant to being a childbirth house to being a childbirth house. One of the jobs in the childbirth house is castration. Within 3 days of birth, the boar will grow faster if castrated. When castrated pigs, you should use a knife to cut a hole, squeeze the testicles outward from the incision, grab them with your hands and pull them out until they are pulled.

When Li Di saw the teaching video, he felt extremely scared. “As a man, I feel it hurts a lot."Li Di said, "It's not the pig's pain, it's me. "He refused to go to the delivery room. Fortunately, the headquarters had a job recruitment for information specialists, and his income would be less than when he was in a pig farm, but he immediately applied to transfer his post. Now he is responsible for the information construction of the pig farm in the office building. If he hadn't been "pigs" all the time when he was calling, he would be no different from an ordinary white-collar office worker. After working for

for 203 days, Zhang Yao proposed to resign. Usually he was alone in the pig house, facing pigs every day, and talking to people for no more than 20 minutes. When he returned home on vacation at the end of March, he suddenly realized that he was not very good at dealing with people. When he saw his relatives, he spoke timidly, his voice was as small as a mosquito, and his speech was short and rude. His father asked him: "How did you become like this bear? "

This incident directly prompted him to leave the position of reserve branch manager. This subtle influence made him feel scared. He stayed for another half a year and didn't know what it would look like.

Zhang Yao felt that he had known himself better after raising pigs for more than half a year. "I only knew what he wanted after going to that place. "Zhang Yao said that he used to think that it would be fine to find a job that he was more interested in, but now he felt that he still had to find a job that he was more interested in, so he would be willing to put in more energy and pay more attention. He decided to return to his major and work in the direction of food research and development.

Deng Yuheng is still stuck in the pig farm. He would be confused from time to time. Thinking of his classmates and friends working outside and going to eat barbecue and hot pot after get off work, he didn't know how long he should stay in the pig farm, nor what he should do in the future. Some things in

are becoming clearer and clearer. After entering the pig farming industry for more than half a year, he learned a lot of knowledge and skills, and felt that he had changed from a "novice who knows nothing" to a "newbie who just started", "because he knows more that he knows that he is ignorant. "

In April this year, he took a vacation of more than ten days, gathered with his college classmates, and told them where he worked. "He works openly and earns money with his labor. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. "

Although he hasn't figured out where he will be in the future, he knows what he wants to do now. The current priority is to stay in the pig farm and make money well. He has to support himself first. He has still had more than 30,000 yuan in student loans from college for four years. He has saved up almost now.

He lives in a four-person dormitory and lives a collective life similar to when he was in college. He bought a haircut online, his roommates cut each other's hair, and his two colleagues turned bald, and he left a small braid. He also spent 2,880 yuan to buy an electric piano , and in his spare time, he followed the video website in the dormitory Learn.

Recently, Deng Yuheng was sent to the delivery room. There were many female colleagues there. He felt that "the work of men and women is not tired", and injected motivation into his work.

One morning, Deng Yuheng went to work in the pig house. On the way, he saw the sun coming out. The sky was beautiful. There happened to be a pile of water on the roadside, so he took a picture of the reflection of the sun in the water. After the shooting, he found that it was the feces in the feces that overflowed.

(At the request of the interviewee, Li Di, Deng Yuheng and Zhang Yao in the article are pseudonyms)

China Youth Daily·China Youth Network reporter Chen Yian

Source: China Youth Daily