The Bianhe River near Yongcheng is part of the Grand Canal dug by the Sui Dynasty, and the embankment is commonly known as the "Sui Embankment". Under a big willow tree not far from the Sui Embankment, Du Zhongxiao pointed to the surroundings and said to Chen Qin: "From the Sui Embankment in the west to the Lotus Pond in the north, it is the pasture of this county, and there are boundaries in the east and south. Today, there are more than 160 cows, more than 20 horses, and more than 200 sheep here. Most of the horses are mares, and several stallions are used as stallions. ”

Speaking of this, Du Zhongxiao pointed to the stable not far away and said: "There are three stallions there, which I bought from the capital at a great price for breeding. The original stallion was castrated in the past two days and used by the county officials. In addition, if the 'commune' makes money, it will also buy some peony horses and come back. These three stallions, in excellent condition, are all sold from the northwest to the Central Plains, the descendants of the Tang horses of the previous dynasty, and they are extremely precious. The most important thing you have to do here is to use these three Northwest stallions to breed more good horses. ”

Chen Qin scratched his head and said: "Official, the small ones don't know how to herd horses, when they will breed, how do you know?" ”

Du Zhongxiao beckoned to a thin old man in the distance: "Wu Ada, you come." ”

The old man stepped forward to salute, and Du Zhongxiao said: "How to extract sperm from stallions and breed them to selected horses, you teach Chen Qin." ”

The old man smiled obscenely, took out a casing from his arms, showed it to Chen Qin, and said, "This thing is abundant locally, and it is easy to buy it in the market." Let the horse get the essence into this thing and soak it in warm water—"

Du Zhongxiao waved his hand: "You will talk about these things later, I have other things to tell here." ”

Wu Adaa hurriedly took the casing into his arms, arched his hand, and stepped aside, feeling a little unfinished.

Plant breeding is artificial pollination, animal breeding is artificial insemination, Du Zhongxiao's memory in his previous life, he still has an impression of this kind of thing. Not to mention anything else, the walls of the countryside in his previous life were painted with slogans of eugenics for a long time. How to eugenics? He doesn't understand people, but fortunately animals have been taught in biology class, and the basic principle is still understood, that is, the selection of paternal and maternal parents to inherit and stabilize the excellent traits. A stallion can correspond to many mares, and the mares with excellent quality are selected as the mother of the next generation, and the other mares are born to survive the fittest and can be used.

Horses are domesticated animals, and if you don't pay attention to the selection and maintenance of breeds, they will quickly degenerate and adapt to their living environment. The Song Dynasty bought horses from all over the north, and the horse breeds were mixed, and there was no breeding and maintenance of breeds, which degraded greatly. Most of the horse herding supervisors in the Tang Dynasty were in the northwest, but in one or two hundred years, the excellent military horses of the early Tang Dynasty were rare in the northwest, let alone in the interior. If the quality is not good, the quantity can be supplemented, but the breeding of horses in the Song Dynasty is very problematic, and it is difficult to maintain the number of horses.

"The sky is blue, the wilderness is vast, the wind blows the grass and sees the cattle and sheep." When he was a child, Du Zhongxiao formed an impression that only the vast prairie is a paradise for cattle and sheep, as well as horses galloping. It's not easy to raise cattle where you farm, let alone horses? It wasn't until much later, when he saw the statistical distribution of livestock, that he realized he was so wrong.

Where is the largest number of cattle and sheep? It has never been the vast steppes of Central and North Asia, but India. Even in the Central Plains, the number of cattle and sheep is much larger than that of the current Khitan. Even with the addition of the party and the Western Regions, the number of cattle and sheep in the Great Song Dynasty is much greater than theirs. The reason why a large number of sheep are imported from the Khitan and Dangxiang every year is because of the cheap price and the significance of trade balance.

Animal husbandry has always been a type of agriculture, agriculture is developed, and the ability to raise livestock is much greater than that of naturally formed grasslands. Even in Du Zhongxiao's previous life, all the land in the Central Plains had been reclaimed for crops, and the sheep production of several major agricultural provinces was higher than the total number of provinces and regions with prairies combined. In agricultural areas, as long as the fields are used and the straw in the fields is added, the same area is much more than the cattle and sheep carried by the grasslands.

The Great Song Dynasty was far from being densely populated at this time, most of the areas were vast and sparsely populated, and there was a large amount of pasture land in the agricultural areas. Where the fields are cultivated and cultivated, even Baozheng knows that orchards, mulberry fields and pastures must be set aside, not to mention those naturally formed villages. There is land that is not farmed, both to make full use of rural labor – such as children to graze herd, women to weave cloth – and to serve as a reserve of farmland.

The cattle of the Great Song Dynasty are very cheap, and the places with low prices are always up to three times, and the expensive areas of the Central Plains are only five times. The reason for the lack of farmers is that the cost of raising is too high, and the same grazing is not as cost-effective as grazing. Cattle can only be used for farming in the countryside, and for a farmer's family, the cultivated fields cannot be taken care of. Small-scale farmers need to raise cattle in the common hands of many households, which is now prevalent in the countryside. They usually raise a lot of cattle, which they can't use themselves, so they can rent them to others. When people who don't have cattle use cattle, they just need to rent them.

The same is true for state and county governments to raise cattle, and the government is more qualified to graze cattle on a large scale, thereby reducing the cost of breeding. The small-scale peasant economy is naturally not suitable for raising large livestock. There are many large livestock in the people, and there are either large landlords or professional clubs. At this time, beef is actually not expensive, except for the factors of the government's ban on slaughter and price limit, it is also similar to mutton, and the situation is roughly the same as that of Du Zhongxiao's previous life. Pork is expensive because the cost of raising pigs is greater than that of sheep at this time, and because of the primitive breed, the meat yield is not much of an advantage compared with sheep. Due to the cost of feeding, small farmers will give priority to raising chickens, followed by sheep, and small families will also raise cattle by sheep.

This is the basis of the economy, the foundation of the small-scale peasant economy here, so that the private sector cannot raise large livestock to develop. The people do not raise them, rely on a few official animal husbandry supervisors, and there is no corresponding science and technology, the varieties are degraded year by year, the quality is not improved, and the quantity is difficult to maintain. The number of horses in the Ming and Qing dynasties was much more than in this era, and it was the Yuan Dynasty when a large number of Mongolian horses entered the Central Plains, and a large number of local breeds were screened out by the survival of the fittest. Of course, the economic base of that time was also different from that of this era, and it was not just because of geography and climate.

Du Zhongxiao just started camping, mostly based on his instinct from the experience of his previous life. After being an official for nearly a year, he began to consciously use the political knowledge of his previous life to try to transform this era. He can think of the industrial revolution and open factories, but he also needs to explore the foundation of the rural economy that is compatible with this. In the past life, there was a ready-made guideline, that is, to vigorously develop the collective economy. Regardless of whether this collective is a collective of the majority, a minority or even an individual, in short, it is necessary to break the economic operation model of one household at a time. The collective of the majority is the commune, and the collective of the minority is the various companies and enterprises of the previous life. Use the economy instead of the family to make a small family join the economic cycle.

Step by step, when the collective-run economy accounts for a relatively large proportion of agricultural production, the problem of raising large livestock will be solved. There is no economic foundation, and it is easy to give up halfway by simply relying on small fights to introduce improved varieties and optimize breeding.

The front foot set up a commune for the county officials and servants, and solved the heavy labor burden of the middle and upper class households, and the latter had to start to solve the problems of the middle and lower class households. They lack the means of production, so find a way to supplement them and develop production. According to the actual situation of this era, it can be seen from the price of land alone that the proportion of land in the means of production is not large, mainly animal power and agricultural tools.

Du Zhongxiao attached so much importance to it, and took Chen Qin to the cattle and sheep market for a turn, and then brought him to the pasture, which was for this reason. He now has a clear understanding of what problems he wants to solve and where to start in his position as a magistrate and in the locality.

For Yongcheng County, this pasture is like an excellent stallion that has been introduced, and the seeds of animal power are prepared in advance for future agricultural development, and the fruits can be quickly delivered to the farmers as soon as the time is ripe.