jdhmnovel Chapter 10: Will anyone still steal manure?
Chapter 10: Will anyone still steal manure?
It took Yang Shaofeng five whole days to visit all eight villages and communities in Ningyang County and get the people in all eight villages and communities to reclaim the land that "originally belonged to them".
As for whether the people of Ningyang County planned to plant mulberry trees, hemp, or beans, Yang Shaofeng decided to let them do as they pleased. After all, he, as the county magistrate, knew nothing about farming or the relationship between the seasons and agriculture. Rather than meddling and causing trouble, he would rather focus on figuring out how to develop the livestock industry.
That's right, it's the aquaculture industry.
After several days of searching, the sixteen neighborhood chiefs in the city finally managed to find a batch of chicks and piglets for Yang Shaofeng.
Unfortunately, even though the village elders had tried their best to search, even bringing out their own chicks that had just hatched not long ago, Yang Shaofeng only managed to get a pitiful thirty or so chicks, and the piglets were even more pitiful, numbering only two.
Then, Yang Shaofeng and Lame Wu squatted together next to the empty vegetable patch in the back office, watching the chicks chirping and pecking at the food.
If all thirty or so chicks grow up safely, that's about thirty chickens. Even with some discounts, there should still be at least twenty, right?
In three to five months, these chicks will probably be grown to a decent size. Then, I, the county magistrate, will braise them, stew them, simmer them in yellow broth, stir-fry them, or poach them. These are truly free-range chickens, never having tasted any technology or hard labor in their lives. The meat is... wow...
If you eat one a month, you can still have about ten left over by the end of the year.
Moreover, these chicks must include both roosters and hens, and then the chickens lay eggs, the eggs hatch into more chickens, and so on, with the offspring of these chicks being endless.
By the way, how do you tell the male and female of this thing?
Yang Shaofeng simply turned to look at Limpy Five: "Brother Limpy Five, do you know how to tell if a chick is male or female?"
Limpy Wu chuckled, and as a chick ran past him, he suddenly grabbed it, holding it upside down by its legs. After examining it for a moment, he threw it back into the vegetable garden and said decisively, "This is a male. Your Excellency, look, its head is turned back, and it keeps trying to peck at my hand. Its wings are also flapping very powerfully, so it's a male. If it were a female, it wouldn't flap its wings so powerfully, and its head wouldn't be turned back to peck at people."
Seeing Yang Shaofeng staring longingly at the chicks, Lame Wu couldn't help but ask, "Your Excellency, these chicks do look lovely, but where do you plan to keep them after dark? It would be a shame if a weasel snatched them away."
Yang Shaofeng was slightly taken aback, and suddenly cursed himself for being so stupid.
They decided to raise chickens and pigs on a whim, but they've been so busy getting people from all over the village to "claim their land" that they haven't prepared chicken sheds in advance!
This won't do. Farmers can raise chickens anywhere in their yards, but Yang Shaofeng is aiming for large-scale chicken farming. This batch of chicks is just Yang Shaofeng testing the waters. If they are just free-range in the yard like ordinary farmers, can it still be called large-scale chicken farming?
So, how should this chicken coop be set up?
According to Yang Shaofeng's understanding, the first thing to do when setting up a chicken shed is to ensure ventilation, the second is to clean up chicken manure to keep it clean, someone needs to feed and water it every day, and in winter, you also need to consider keeping it warm and preventing chicken plague.
What else is left?
After thinking for a long time without coming up with a solution, Yang Shaofeng simply instructed Limpy Five, "I'll have to trouble you, Brother Limpy Five, to find me a few carpenters, have someone prepare some wood and such, and also find a few strong women."
After Limpy Wu left to carry out his orders, Yang Shaofeng once again stared blankly at the chicks in the vegetable garden.
The chicks that the sixteen village chiefs brought were not the fast-growing broiler chickens that were selectively bred in later generations, but genuine free-range chickens. The meat of this kind of chicken is firm and tastes good no matter how it is cooked, but it grows very slowly and may take a year to fully mature.
If you want to raise chickens on a large scale, simply raising them like this won't be enough, because if you keep raising them like this, the next generation of chicks will still be the same as the current generation. You must select and breed them.
The so-called selective breeding involves picking out roosters and hens that grow quickly to be used as breeding stock, allowing them to breed a new generation of chicks that grow even faster, and then selecting the fastest-growing chicks from among the chicks to be used as the next generation of breeding stock.
The same applies to laying hens. The hens that lay the most eggs are selected as breeding hens, and then the chicks that lay the most eggs are selected from the offspring to become the next generation of breeding hens.
After thinking it over, Yang Shaofeng simply found some bricks, tiles, and wood chips in the yard and built a simple chicken shed according to his own understanding.
After the carpenter and strong woman that Limpy Wu had found arrived, Yang Shaofeng said directly to the carpenters, "It should be like this. Each small cage should be separated by a solid wooden board to prevent the roosters from fighting each other. There should be a feeding trough and a water trough in front of the cage so that they can eat and drink easily. The wooden board at the bottom of the cage should be able to be pulled out so that it is easy to clean the chicken droppings."
Yang Shaofeng then turned to the several strong women and instructed them: "Clean the chicken coop every day, change the water frequently, and don't be stingy with the feed. Feed them what they need. After cleaning up the chicken manure every day, take it to a place to compost it. We can use it to fertilize the land later."
But then Yang Shaofeng suddenly felt something was wrong.
According to Yang Shaofeng's idea, he could simply find an empty courtyard in the back office or the county town to use as a chicken coop. This was easy, as there were many empty rooms in the back office and a large number of unclaimed courtyards in the county town. As the magistrate of Ningyang County, Yang Shaofeng could use them almost at will.
But chicken manure is no good. It smells terrible whether it's composted or not. It's okay now that there are only a few chicks, but once they grow up or the scale of farming increases, the massive amount of chicken manure produced every day will suffocate people.
Even just thinking about it, Yang Shaofeng could feel a pungent smell of chicken manure hitting him.
Shaking his head to banish the disgusting scene of massive amounts of chicken manure from his mind, Yang Shaofeng then instructed the several robust women: "This chicken manure must be taken outside the city and composted in a wasteland. It must not be left in the city."
Otherwise, if he doesn't get rid of the title of "pig-raising magistrate" and then gets labeled as "chicken-dung magistrate," that would be the end of him!
After all, the Ming Dynasty also had the bad habit of giving people nicknames, and "Journey to the West" and "Water Margin" perfectly reflect this.
However, to Yang Shaofeng's surprise, Limpy Five was the first to jump out and object: "Your Excellency, we must not just find a piece of wasteland to compost chicken manure. Otherwise, I'm afraid that before it's even composted, the chicken manure will be stolen!"
Yang Shaofeng looked at Limpy Wu with a bewildered expression.
Is someone still stealing manure?