Chapter 97: Nick's Endeavor (Part 2)

As time went on, the material conditions at the farm gradually improved, and Nick’s horse-breeding enterprise began to flourish. The farm built permanent stables according to horse-breeding requirements, established a dedicated water supply system for the horses, and even fenced off a small piece of land as a paddock for the horses to move around freely.

To solve the problem of concentrated feed, he went to the Planning Committee several times and got permission to include the purchase or collection of oats, alfalfa, and other legumes and miscellaneous grains in the procurement list. Wu Nanhai also agreed to include these feed varieties in the planting plan. Throughout the winter, he was busy looking for suitable feed for the horses. To get them to breed in the spring, he had to fatten up both the stallions and the mares—feeding them only grass would only keep them alive.

Fortunately, after the capture of Goujia Village, a large amount of confiscated grain included many miscellaneous grains. Nick was overjoyed. He went to Ma Qianzhu and pestered him for a whole day, finally getting his hands on all the beans except soybeans, green beans, and adzuki beans. He also told Wu Nanhai that the leftover soybean dregs from making tofu should be used as horse feed.

“I wanted to feed them to the pigs,” Wu Nanhai said, feeling it was a pity.

“It’s a waste to feed it to either horses or pigs. We don’t have many dishes right now. I can make fried soybean dregs for everyone. It can be considered a dish,” said Auntie Tian, who was in charge of the cafeteria.

“Let’s not,” Wu Nanhai said. “We’ll be cursed to death by everyone.”

“It’s not bad. Fry it with mutton fat or lard, add some green garlic, and it’s very fragrant…” Auntie Tian gestured. “Snowflake dish!”

“We’re short on animal fat. That dish relies on fat for flavor. Otherwise, who would eat dry soybean dregs?”

Nick said, “Pigs can’t pull carts, and besides, we don’t need a pig cavalry.”

“Alright, you win,” Wu Nanhai conceded. “It’s yours.”

Thanks to the supplement of miscellaneous grains and tofu dregs, the horse herd was in good condition throughout the winter. Moreover, the herd had expanded. Through purchase and capture, Nick’s stables now housed twenty-five horses. A large portion of them were already capable of daily labor, whether it was pulling carts or driving animal-powered machinery.

Although Wu Nanhai’s expertise in any specific field was average, he was indeed a good leader, Nick thought. At least he would listen to everyone’s opinions and ideas and would not ignore anyone—including the foreman of the long-term laborers on the farm.

The gate to the paddock outside the stables was closed. Inside, several teenagers in gray military uniforms were tending to the horses. Seeing Nick return, these half-grown boys all gathered around.

“Chief Nick, why won’t this horse listen to me?”

“I want to wash the horse’s hooves, but what if the horse won’t let me grab its hoof?”

“How do you clean the hair off the horse brush?”

“Chief, a horse kicked me…” Someone had even been “honorably wounded.”

They wore the red collar patches of the artillery and were artillery cadets. According to regulations, the army’s artillery cadets had to spend one day a week in rotation at the farm’s stables: washing the horses, learning to trim hooves, shoeing horses, walking the horses, and so on. These cadets greatly lightened Nick’s burden, allowing him to focus his main energy on training the horses, establishing pedigrees, and managing their care.

“Don’t worry, speak slowly.”

Nick calmed everyone down and told a boy working in the stables to lead Datie back to its stall. When it came to horses, Nick was always full of energy.

“Washing hooves requires a special technique for grabbing the hoof,” Nick said. “Little Dazi, you come and brush ‘Celeron’s’ hooves.”

All the horses collected from this time and space were named after Intel and AMD processor names. The natives, however, couldn’t understand why a perfectly good horse wasn’t named Saihu (Tiger-Racer) or Sailong (Dragon-Racer), but “Saiyang” (Sheep-Racer). Were the sheep in Australia very fast?

“Yes, sir!” Little Dazi answered loudly and led “Celeron” over.

Little Dazi’s real name was Da Shi. He was not Mongolian, but he said his hometown was in Henan. After a disaster in his hometown, he had wandered all the way to Guangdong. Just because his hair was a little curly, his fellow cadets had given him this nickname.

Little Dazi was short. Following Nick’s instructions, he lifted the horse’s front leg to his waist and, with a grunt, lifted the leg with both hands. He didn’t expect it to be so easy. Just as Nick had demonstrated, he held the hoof with his left hand and rested it on his knee. But as soon as he let go, the hoof slipped off his knee. Little Dazi quickly jumped back, a worried expression on his face, afraid of being kicked.

“Don’t be afraid,” Nick reminded him. “You’re holding the hoof the wrong way. Try holding it in the opposite direction.”

He tried holding it in the opposite direction, and indeed, it was much more secure than before. He used the brush in his right hand to clean the dirt from inside the hoof. Every time the brush touched the hoof, the horse would move its leg from time to time. At these moments, Little Dazi’s face would tense up. Finally, he brought over an iron bucket of water and washed the sole of the horse’s hoof with a brush.

“Remember to hold the horse’s leg firmly while washing. If you let go in the middle, it will step on your foot or become enraged.”

After washing the horse’s feet, he applied hoof oil as instructed by Nick. This hoof oil was something Nick had to apply to Wu Nanhai for a long time to get.

“Good, now wash the hind feet,” Nick said.

Little Dazi hesitated. “Will it kick me? A kick from a horse’s hind leg can be fatal…”

“Don’t be afraid, I’m watching,” Nick reassured him.

The hind feet were more terrifying than the front. Little Dazi tried to lift the left hind leg with both hands but failed. However, the horse didn’t kick him, which put his mind at ease. So he tried again with more force, and this time, he lifted it quite easily.

But cleaning was still very laborious. Every time the hoof was about to slip off his body, he would have to lift it up again with all his strength. It took a lot of effort, but he finally managed to clean all four hooves. Little Dazi was already covered in sweat.

“Good job,” Nick praised, although it took a little long.

“Horses are precious and very useful animals. If you want them to serve you, you have to take good care of them, understand?”

“Yes, Chief!” the future artillerymen answered in unison.

Nick then gave some pointers to the others, inspected the horses moving around in the paddock to make sure they were all in good condition, and then returned to the stables.

The tall stables were one of the iconic buildings of the farm. Not only did the local natives marvel at it, but even the transmigrators were full of curiosity about this building. The entire building was a brick-and-wood structure, long and rectangular, with a high-pitched roof, providing excellent ventilation and lighting. The double-row stalls had floors of rammed earth. The bedding was changed daily to ensure the stables were clean. They lacked veterinary medicine, so they had to strengthen cleaning measures to ensure the horses got sick less often, or not at all. Yang Baogui also sprinkled lime on the ground at the entrance and exit of the stables every day as a simple disinfection measure.

Since the number of horses had increased, Nick’s staff had also grown. He disliked the experienced horse handlers that Wu De had found among the native immigrants. They were quite ignorant, and many of their horse-rearing practices were completely wrong. So he simply didn’t want any of them.

“Correcting mistakes is more difficult than starting from a blank slate.”

So, Nick only selected two fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boys from the children of the farm workers, the brothers Shengbao and Laibao, to help him. These two boys had gone through the literacy class and were now officially his apprentices.

He instructed Shengbao to fetch water and add feed for “Datie.” The breeding stallion was collected for semen twice a day, so it required particularly rich nutrition. For this, he had specially obtained a special feed ration of eggs and millet from Wu Nanhai. The eggs were to supplement protein, and the millet was very effective in improving the stallion’s libido and semen quality.

Laibao brought clean water from outside. Nick taught him step-by-step how to clean “Datie’s” genitals, especially washing the testicles with cold water. This was something Yang Baogui had taught him, and it was said to be beneficial for semen secretion.

“Datie” was a breeding stallion in which they had placed great hopes. As a Tieling draft horse, it carried the blood of many of the world’s top-class stallions, including the Ardennes, Anglo-Norman, Percheron, and Anglo-Arabian. It was an excellent draft horse, extremely important for the transmigrators’ future agriculture, military, and road transport. Besides breeding it with the Tieling mare, Yang Baogui also planned to crossbreed it with the Dian mares.

After cleaning “Datie” and instructing his apprentices on what to watch out for, Nick hurried back to his room to rest for a few hours. He had been exhausted recently. He got up at 3 a.m. to feed the horses and worked until 9 p.m. for the last feeding, tending to the horses, teaching his apprentices, collecting and processing feed, doing administrative work… he barely had an hour of free time.

The room had a persistent smell of horse manure, but Nick didn’t mind at all. He was too tired and didn’t want to take a bath. Afraid of dirtying the bedsheets, he spread some straw at the doorway and slept directly on it, changing it the next day. Wu Nanhai joked that Nick was now like a horse himself.

He woke up after less than two hours. The breeding season was a busy time, and he didn’t dare to sleep too soundly. He checked his watch. It was almost noon, and his stomach was growling. He got up, brushed the straw off his clothes, poured some clean water from the earthenware jar into a basin to wash his face, and was about to go to the cafeteria for lunch.

Suddenly, the phone rang. It was Yang Baogui.

“Come to the Lotus Pavilion for lunch. Wu Nanhai is treating.”

The Lotus Pavilion was a dedicated place for “corruption” at the demonstration farm. There was a small lake next to it, now full of lotus roots, and so everyone started calling it that.

“Why the treat for no reason?”

“It’s not for you. You’re just a guest. By the way, this has a lot to do with your horse-breeding enterprise. You must come!” Yang Baogui said and hung up.

A lot to do with my horse-breeding enterprise? Nick was puzzled.

When he arrived at the Lotus Pavilion, he saw that the guest of honor was the People’s Commissar for Civil Affairs, Wu De. As they started talking at the table, Nick realized that Yang Baogui was after Damei Village.

This idea had been around for a long time. In his months of horse-breeding practice, Nick had also realized that the overall climate and environment of Lingao were not very suitable for horses. The space was also too small. Currently, only the open areas on both sides of the Wenlan River were suitable for grazing and exercising the horses, but these areas were either already cultivated as farmland or were included in the agricultural department’s future reclamation plans. It was unlikely that large areas of land would be reserved for horse breeding—after all, agriculture was the top priority, and grain production was also directly related to the scale of horse breeding.

Although stall feeding with a large amount of silage and concentrated feed could support a fairly high density of horses in the existing space, the climate here was too hot and humid. In the summer, it was very detrimental to the horses’ health. Moreover, the long adaptation period of these sensitive animals to a new environment was also a headache. A horse that felt unhappy and uncomfortable would obviously not have much “sexual interest,” and the natural breeding rate would be low. This was also why Yang Baogui was so eager to implement artificial insemination.

After the New Year, Yang Baogui had made several trips to the Gaoshanling area to see if he could open a summer mountain pasture there. The mountain vegetation was lush, the climate was cool and pleasant, natural fodder was abundant, and there was a clean water source, making it a suitable summering place for horses and other large livestock.

The most ready-made place was naturally Damei Village. This small village, built on the ruins of Goujia Village, was firmly controlled by the transmigrator regime. The village had a water source and nearly a thousand mu of valley and sloping land that could be used for grazing and planting fodder.

But this matter required the approval of Wu De, who controlled all civil affairs.

“I have no objection to establishing a pasture in Damei Village,” Wu De said. “But the road to Damei Village passes through the county seat. Will that affect you?”

“What are you talking about?” Yang Baogui said dismissively. “If that’s the case, Bairen City is only a few kilometers from the county seat. Besides, aren’t the surroundings of the county seat under our surveillance now?”

“That’s true,” Wu De nodded. “But after establishing a pasture there, you will lack strong protection. Damei is more than ten kilometers from here, and the road has not been paved, it’s just a simple road. In case of an incident, it would take at least half an hour for reinforcements to arrive. You will have to rely on the Damei Village militia to protect the pasture.”

“Didn’t Xi Yazhou personally handle the political construction and militia training in Damei Village? It can’t be too bad.”

“No matter how good it is, they are only armed with broadswords and spears. And there are only twelve strictly trained core militiamen,” Wu De said, taking a sip of wine. “Damei Village has a total of fifty households, two hundred and sixty-one people, young and old. There are sixty-four able-bodied men between sixteen and fifty.” His memory was very good, and he recited the numbers accurately. “You have to know one thing: Lingao has a serious bandit problem. If you raise dozens of horses in Damei, sixty-four able-bodied men may not be able to stop a large group of bandits—wealth moves people’s hearts.”

“Isn’t that an exaggeration? Just twenty or thirty horses—”

“No exaggeration,” Wu De said. “Do you know how much a horse sells for in this time and space?”

“A hundred taels?”