Chapter 170: The Breeding Farm

Zhang Youfu considered for a moment. “There is another way, but it’s a bit troublesome and won’t be settled quickly.”

“As long as I can get this land, I’m willing to wait,” Wu Nanhai said. As long as it was settled before autumn.

“Then you just wait for my news,” Zhang Youfu said, requesting over two hundred taels of silver from Wu Nanhai. He then spent more than ten days wandering the major paddy fields near the county seat, managing to buy seventy mu of irrigated fields. He then took the land deeds and exchanged them for the plot of land.

Seeing this result, the members of the Agriculture Committee were at a loss for words. During the several rounds of negotiations, the price offered by the transmigrator group had already reached two hundred taels of silver. The Agriculture Committee had also proposed an in-kind trade of no less value, but the old man had rejected it all. How could he agree to a trade as soon as he was shown land deeds?

“He wants to be a landlord, doesn’t he? Now that we’ve made him a landlord, of course he’s willing,” Zhang Youfu said, pleased with himself.

“But we were willing to pay. Isn’t buying land with money the same thing?”

“The barbarian has never seen the world; he’s just afraid of being cheated,” Zhang Youfu said with contempt—the urban-rural divide was still quite severe.

“So that’s how it is,” Wu Nanhai nodded. It seemed this down-and-out character’s ability to make a living as a go-between in the county was not without reason.

“The habits of these traditional peasants are truly incomprehensible,” Ye Yuming had lamented at the time.

“Peasants in the past haven’t seen the world, have no education, and are often cheated. It’s normal for them to be highly guarded. That’s why rural work is so difficult.”

From Zhang Youfu’s perspective, what was even more incomprehensible were these “Kun bandits.” They had both the power and the influence. If they had simply seized the land, the landlord wouldn’t have dared to do anything. Even the county government would never offend the Kun bandits for such a pauper.

This method, to put it simply, was about winning the hearts and minds of the people, but Zhang Youfu felt there was more to it than that.

This piece of land, acquired with great effort and cost, was located to the south of the farm. The Wenlan River formed a small backwater here, creating a large shoal with abundant reeds. The land was flat, with small rolling hills nearby, and water was easily accessible. After surveying the area, Wu Nanhai and Yang Baogui felt it was a suitable location for a formal breeding farm.

The new farm had two sections: one for livestock and one for poultry. Wu Nanhai loved coming here, not just for work, but also because he felt a great sense of accomplishment every time. Especially after the circumnavigation of the island was completed, the channels for acquiring natural resources were further expanded. Bopu had started regular shipping routes to Changhua and Yulin. Large numbers of cattle and sheep were transported from Changhua, rapidly expanding the herds. The population of everyone’s favorite meat—pork—had also grown. By his estimate, by next year, they could at least restore the per capita meat consumption standard for the transmigrators to that of a 21st-century cosmic power.

Wu Nanhai went to the stables first. Yang Baogui had recently started learning to ride from Nick—he found cycling on the dirt roads too jarring for his rear, and the seat hurt his perineum.

“I don’t want to get prostate problems from riding a bike. I have a wife,” Yang Baogui had said, and so he went to learn horse riding, planning to travel by horse in the future. Nick promised he could ride a Dian horse when he went out, as a reward for treating the horses.

When Wu Nanhai went to look for him, Nick told him that Yang Baogui had already gone to the poultry farm to supervise the construction of the hatchery.

This large hatchery was being built to support the Society of Heaven and Earth’s poultry promotion plan. Artificial incubation had appeared very early in China and was already widespread by the Ming Dynasty, so it wasn’t some brand-new transmigrator technology. However, artificial incubation was not popular in Lincheng. Although chickens, ducks, and geese were common local poultry, they were not raised on a large scale, so there was no demand for it.

There were several traditional methods of artificial incubation. The most common were the “kang” (heated brick bed) method in the north and the “jar” method in East China. Wu Nanhai hadn’t studied animal husbandry, so he had to consult Yang Baogui, who had often gone to the countryside to serve farmers and had seen a lot.

He suggested using the northern kang incubation method. This method used simple equipment, had a large capacity, and was very suitable for large-scale farming needs. With skilled technique, the hatching rate could be between 80-90%, comparable to modern electric incubation. A common seven-flue kang incubation workshop could hold 2,600 eggs at a time and hatch up to 15,000 chicks per month. Expansion was also quite simple and required almost no modern equipment or materials—the insulation of sun-dried mud bricks was even more suitable for a hatchery than fired bricks.

When Wu Nanhai arrived at the construction site, he saw Yang Baogui giving instructions. The new hatchery had been slightly improved with a tiled roof and brick-faced exterior walls—after all, in a place like Lincheng, a pure adobe house wouldn’t last long.

“I still feel it’s a bit of a waste,” Wu Nanhai said, looking at the simple little building under construction. He was worried about where to find 2,600 fertilized eggs each time. Because eggs were scarce and the viability of fertilized embryos was short, the collected fertilized eggs were all hatched naturally by mother hens.

“It won’t be a waste. We’ll inevitably need to do some drying during the rainy season. This hatchery can double as a drying room.”

Yang Baogui told him not to worry. “The first batch currently being brooded can provide about two hundred hens. That’s enough for twenty small farming households. The numbers will gradually increase. It’s a gradual process—think about how few chickens we had when we first moved here. Now we have hundreds. The growth rate is in the thousands of percent. If we mobilize the masses like this, we might even need to expand by the end of the year.”

“Take me to see the chicken coops.”

“Alright. Let me just give them a few instructions first.” Yang Baogui checked the situation at the site. The most crucial part, the kang’s flue, was almost complete. This was the most important part. A well-built kang saved fuel and transferred heat quickly. A poorly built one wouldn’t heat up properly and would even have smoke backdraft. It was a specialized craft. Of course, there were no kang builders in Lincheng, not even among the immigrants. They had to operate entirely based on books and follow the blueprints. He gave some instructions to the foreman and then led Wu Nanhai to the newly completed chicken coops.

The new coops still used bamboo fences and were enclosed with fishing nets for free-range farming. Climbing vegetables were planted to provide shade for the coops. The new coops implemented segregated farming. Breeding stock was kept separately, while laying hens, chicks, and pullets each had their own space, preventing interference and making it easier to add different feeds according to their status. Finally, there were the Bronze turkeys, whose flock had now expanded to about a dozen.

About two hundred pullets were active in the spacious area under the net cage, looking to be in good spirits. The ground had just been sprinkled with water, and there was a smell of lime.

“We clean the chicken manure here at a fixed time every day and then disinfect with limewater. We have no choice, the density is still a bit high. We have to prevent diseases. Besides, chicken manure is also feed, we can’t waste it.”

“We’re not raising fish, are we?”

Chickens have short digestive tracts, and their feces still contain many nutrients. Wu Nanhai knew of a circular agriculture method where chickens were raised next to a fish pond, and the chicken manure was used to feed the fish.

“We feed it to the pigs.”

“Damn, that’s disgusting.” Thinking of the smell of chicken manure, Wu Nanhai already felt queasy.

“After fermentation, the pigs quite like it,” Yang Baogui said with a wry smile. “To be honest, I don’t like this feeding method either. When we have enough feed in the future, we’ll just use it as fertilizer.”

Wu Nanhai followed him to the duck pens. In poultry farming, ducks were actually more profitable than chickens. Ducks are omnivorous, can forage for themselves, are resistant to roughage, and have a high feed conversion rate. During the first rice planting in the spring, Fa Shilu had even experimentally tried rice-duck farming, letting the ducks forage in the paddy fields. They could not only eat the snails and small fish and shrimp in the paddies but also eliminate pests and weeds. Fa Shilu planned to drive the ducks into the fields to clean up after the rice was harvested, eating the leftover empty grains and scattered rice. This was much more convenient and thorough than manual cleaning. In Japan, this had a nice name, “Aigamo method,” considered a retro, purely natural rice farming technique.

The duck pens were set up by the river bend. A bamboo fence separated the bay from the river channel, with a sluice gate that could be opened and closed to prevent the ducks from wandering off. The reeds here were dense, the river water was rich in nutrients, and the riverbank was home to a large number of snails and other aquatic animals that ducks loved to eat. The Agriculture Committee had found a duck herder among the immigrants who would take the ducks out every day and also collect snails and mussels, which were crushed and used as duck feed.

“Don’t step carelessly,” Yang Baogui reminded him, especially in the grassy areas of the riverbank. The ducks might lay their eggs anywhere inside. The duck herder would patrol in the evening to collect all the eggs.

“We now have over two hundred ducks and more than thirty geese. Ducks and geese save a lot more feed than chickens. Except for the egg-laying poultry that need protein supplements, they mostly eat green fodder, and their egg production rate is also good. They could also be promoted as a farming option.”

The ducks were a mix of local breeds and Beijing ducks brought from the modern world. Yang Baogui planned to crossbreed them to see the results. As for geese, the transmigrators hadn’t brought any—because China’s native goose breeds were recognized as superior. He had simply bought a few from the market—the most common in South China, the Lion-head goose.

Wu Nanhai said, “Raising ducks and geese requires water, so the farming conditions are limited. It’s not as easy to promote as chickens. Besides, duck and goose eggs are not popular. People still prefer chicken eggs. Who would eat duck eggs unless they are made into preserved or salted eggs? Have you ever eaten a goose egg?”

“I’ve had marinated goose eggs. They taste pretty good,” Yang Baogui recalled the delicious taste of the marinated goose eggs he once had.

“Poultry just grows so fast. If only pig farming could have such high reproductive efficiency.”

“The reproductive rate of pigs isn’t bad either. A sow can have two litters a year, producing twenty piglets. With good care, the survival rate is very high,” Yang Baogui said. “The biggest problem is the shortage of sows.”