Chapter 299: The Current Situation and Its Abuses

The men who came with him to Jeju were cadets drawn from the cavalry, transport, and artillery training detachments. These three branches all required extensive use of draft horses. Therefore, in Lin’gao, they took turns at the Mopanling pasture for practical work in horse breeding and training.

Apart from a small number of personnel left in Lin’gao to maintain the institution and one company transferred to Shandong, the rest of the cavalry training detachment, along with their equipment, were almost entirely transferred to Jeju. According to the General Staff’s orders, the cavalry training detachment’s base was moved from Lin’gao to Jeju Island. In the future, Jeju Island would be the Fubo Army’s cavalry formation and training base.

In addition, the transport and artillery training detachments would also establish their own draft horse training squadrons on Jeju Island, specifically for training their own horse handlers and breeders.

This group of over two hundred cadets transferred from Lin’gao, although mostly inexperienced first-year cadets, was the most reliable basic force Nick had. Compared to the listless local Service Corps, they were far superior in both work enthusiasm and loyalty. Not to mention, they had all undergone three months of basic training, were equipped with weapons, and were a force to be reckoned with.

Since the arrival of these cadets on Jeju, Nangong Wudi even felt that he could free up more mobile forces to advance the next step of extending their rule to every region of the island—these cadets could be used to garrison Jeju town.

The cadets, according to their branches, set up their own temporary camps on the outskirts of the horse enclosure. Although there were houses for them in Jeju town, Nick believed that the cadets must get used to the smell of horse manure and horses to be competent in horse breeding and handling in the future.

The camp was very simple, no different from a horse shed except for the four walls. The surrounding walls were made of volcanic rock, and the roof was made of wooden planks, but it was coated with a thick layer of clay for fire prevention.

Inside, the floor was compacted clay. Stone bed frames were built on both sides, and standard-issue bed boards were placed on them to serve as the soldiers’ beds—the conditions were a bit harsher than in the Lin’gao camps. One room housed a platoon. The most exquisite feature of the room was the glass-paneled windows, which for a time attracted many curious local onlookers.

With all personnel and horses in place, Nick, along with his apprentices and herdsmen, began to train the cadets and the Service Corps.

The training was on-the-job, or a kind of internship, where they learned how to feed and care for the horses while working.

First, all the horses were screened, inspected, evaluated, and classified.

Sick horses were separated and taken to the infirmary stables for treatment. The healthy ones that could be used for draft work were separated by sex. Nick noticed that weight loss was quite common, but most of the horses were still healthy—it seemed that the relatively lower winter temperatures on Jeju Island were beneficial to the horses’ health.

Weight loss was relatively easy to solve. With better management and more concentrated feed, they could recover quickly.

However, almost all the horses were unshod, and their hooves were not regularly trimmed. Many horses’ hooves were worn down to varying degrees, which was very detrimental to their use.

Nick knew that this was a very common phenomenon in East Asia—especially among civilian horses, which were rarely shod. Therefore, he had specifically brought a large number of factory-made horseshoes and a craftsman specializing in fitting them.

Some of the cadets had learned how to trim and shoe horses. He immediately arranged for them to start work. He himself began to screen the selected healthy horses for their reproductive condition.

In general, the horses used by the Jeju Garrison and the Jocheonpo Post Station were in a very chaotic state. There were old horses and young horses, mares, geldings, and uncastrated stallions. The composition of the herd was a mess.

He roughly measured the height of each uncastrated, age-appropriate stallion. The tallest was 131 cm, and the shortest was 105 cm. The average height was about 120 cm.

This height was still on the low side, even compared to the average for ordinary Mongolian horses. Whether for riding or draft, they were too small and weak, not even as tall as the average Shandong donkey, which stood at a good 130 cm.

Nick knew that in the modern era, Mongolian horses raised on a large scale had an average height of about 130 cm for stallions and 125 cm for mares. The Mongolian horses on Jeju Island were clearly substandard.

The reason for their poor quality was clearly related to the lack of scientific breeding. The original horse breed on Jeju was the dwarf horse. Even after being improved by the introduction of Mongolian horses, this gene still existed. Without good control in breeding, the quality of the horses would be poor.

It was obvious that the breeding of the local horses was very crude. Stallions were not strictly castrated, and some low-quality stallions were put to work without being castrated. They were also not separated from the mares. One could imagine that when the horses came into heat in the spring, these low-quality stallions would mate freely with the mares, which not only wasted the mares’ resources but also did nothing to improve the quality of the foals.

Moreover, young, adult, and old stallions were all used for draft work together. The adult stallions in their prime breeding age did not get enough mares, while the young and old stallions occupied many of the mares’ resources.

Scientific horse breeding, first and foremost, requires the selection of the best breeding stallions. Keeping too many stallions is not only meaningless but also prevents the optimization of the bloodline.

In addition, Nick found that the proportion of old stallions was too high, accounting for about half of the total number of stallions. Considering that the stallions in the garrison and forts were mainly used for draft work, it was hard to imagine why so many old stallions were kept.

Under normal circumstances, stallions used for draft work would be castrated for easier management and use. The fact that there were so many stallions, and many of them old, among the draft horses was very abnormal.

As for the mares, the situation was not ideal either. Not only were mares of all ages used for draft work together, but many of them were also overworked. Like the stallions, the proportion of old mares was very high.

Malnutrition and overwork resulted in the mares coming into heat but not getting pregnant, a condition known as “empty heat.” This not only wasted the mares’ reproductive opportunities but also the stallions’ breeding resources.

Nick carefully examined each stallion and mare. He took this opportunity, with the help of Lai Bao and a few cadets, to re-create the “horse files.” During his site inspection, he had discovered that the horse files of the Jeju Garrison were in a state of chaos. Not only were there files without horses and horses without files, but in many cases, the records in the files did not match the brands on the horses.

It was clear that there was a great deal of corruption and fraud involving these official horses. Nick summoned the retained horse management clerks and grooms, who readily admitted to the extensive fraud.

According to the horse management clerk’s testimony, a batch of new horses was transferred from the official horse pastures every year to supplement the official horses of the three local garrisons and nine forts, to replace the dead and culled horses.

However, the transferred horses were often swapped out as soon as they arrived at the garrisons and forts. The new, strong, and good horses were often replaced with horses that should have been culled, through a process of substitution by the officials in charge.

The officials of the official pastures were no fools either. In the spirit of “sharing the benefits,” every time they supplemented the garrisons and forts with new horses, they would mix in some useless old or inferior horses. The receiving officials would also turn a blind eye—after all, the more old horses there were, the faster they would die, and the faster new horses would be supplemented. Everyone benefited.

As for the embezzlement of fodder, it was a common practice. A large portion of the fodder allocated annually to the official draft horses was coarse grains like sorghum, buckwheat, and barley. It was also common for officials at all levels to embezzle and sell it. Basically, it was good if even ten percent of the concentrated feed reached the mangers.

“So that’s how it is!” Nick exclaimed. No wonder the mortality rate of the horses here was so high.

Although he had roughly guessed what was going on, his love for horses made him even more indignant about this “taking food from the mouths of horses.”

However, the more practical problem was that since the horse population on Jeju Island was under the management and use of such a group of people, it was no wonder the quality of the horses was not high.

In that case, it was necessary to introduce breeding stallions from Lin’gao as soon as possible and immediately begin to improve the local horse breed.

In his three years in Lin’gao, he had already used the Tieling draft horses brought by the Senate and his own English Thoroughbred racehorse, “Aranchi,” as breeding stallions to produce several new breeding stallions. And he had already preliminarily separated them into riding and draft lines.

He had originally worried that the bumpy sea journey would cause the death of the breeding stallions—the death of “Landian” had left a deep psychological scar on him, making him reluctant to transport horses by sea. It was not easy to get a few breeding stallions. A mare’s gestation period was as long as 11 months. Even with the method of breeding the mare again immediately after she foaled, a pair of breeding horses could at most produce three foals in three years. Moreover, Nick, from the perspective of protecting the reproductive capacity of the breeding mares, was unwilling to practice foal heat breeding. So, apart from the initial pair of breeding stallions, Big Tie and Little Tie, only two more purebred Tieling draft horses had been added, one of which was a stallion.

Of course, there were also more than twenty so-called improved foals produced by mating the Tieling stallion with Mongolian mares. In addition, there were a few foals produced by mating with the early Dian mares. To distinguish them from the pure Tieling stallions, Nick named the former “Gaoshanling” and the latter “Wenlanjiang.” Among them, there were several sexually mature colts that were considered suitable for selection as breeding stallions. After careful consideration, Nick decided to transfer some of these breeding stallions to Jeju Island—after all, the horse population in Lin’gao was too small, and keeping the breeding stallions there would not allow them to be fully utilized.

As long as he could ensure the safe landing of one breeding stallion, Nick believed that he could impregnate more than fifty mares using artificial insemination. In this way, by 1633, he would have fifty direct descendants of the breeding stallion. From these, he could then select the best breeding stallions and mares.

After careful consideration, Nick decided to send a telegram to the Agriculture Committee in Lin’gao, asking them to prepare two Gaoshanling-line stallions and one Wenlanjiang-line stallion and to arrange for their transport to Jeju Island by ship.

In the telegram, he wrote: “Every effort should be made to ensure the safety of the horses during transport.”