One of them is Tao Hongniang, the one who criticized Liu Yaomei's bad luck last time. Her maiden name is Su Meilan, and she is just 36 years old this year.

She married Lin Shengli from Xishan Village and gave birth to three daughters for the Lin family: Lin Taohong (17 years old), Lin Taolu (11 years old), and Lin Taoxia (7 years old).

Another one is Aunt Wu, Fu Mingqiang's mother, whose family lives next door to Wang Laowu's family.

Although Su Meilan was feisty, she was not an unreasonable person, and Aunt Wu was even more of a pushover; basically, whatever you said, she would do.

So when Ning Jing gave them instructions, although both of them had doubts in their eyes, Aunt Wu had already turned around and gone out to dig up the rotten soil and dry grass.

Su Meilan only stood there for a short while by the shop before going to work with Aunt Wu.

Because the chicks and ducklings haven't arrived yet, there are only the four of them in this breeding farm.

The four of them worked diligently, and in no time they had dug about a dozen pits in the spot Ning Jing had specified.

Just then, Tie Dan ran over from a distance.

He shouted loudly, "Sister-in-law, I brought the earthworms."

He took out a bunch of earthworms, each one very thick.

Su Meilan, who was still sorting through the compost, exclaimed in surprise when she saw it, "Tiedan, where did you get this?"

Tie Dan said proudly, "These are the chickens my sister-in-law and I raised at home. They all eat these now."

Ning Jing stepped forward, took the basin, and poured some earthworms into each mound of soil.

If she's not mistaken, in about a week, there will be many earthworms in each pile of soil.

"Tranquility, relying solely on earthworms won't be enough, will it?"

Wang Guihua looked at the earthworms scattered into the pile of soil and said with some concern.

"Of course, so we need to get some bran to feed the chickens and ducks once a day, and use earthworms for the rest of the time. We can also let them out to find their own food."

Ning Jing nodded and said without hesitation.

Su Meilan was somewhat surprised and said, "Who would be willing to offer up this chaff?"

You know, some families with little food have no choice but to boil some bran to stave off hunger for a day.

If there's not even bran to eat, then they can only eat clay.

If you eat that Guanyin clay, you're practically guaranteed to swell up and die.

"Let Director Xu do the work, and let the village use work points to collect these bran. Tell those who are willing to contribute bran that at the end of the year, those work points will be exchanged for money and given to them."

In this way, it's essentially the same as paying the villagers to buy it, but the money is initially on credit.

The entire Xishan Village has a total of 184 households. Of these, 140 households are willing to contribute money, a dozen or so households contribute labor, and the rest are almost unwilling to contribute either money or labor.

However, most families only contribute one or two yuan, and it's rare to find people like Ning Jing and Wang Guihua who contribute such large sums.

Tan Dingguo only contributed 15 yuan, Xu Changjiu contributed 10 yuan, and Lin Zhicai contributed 5 yuan.

That's enough to buy chicks and ducklings, totaling only 305.7 yuan.

This looks like a lot of money, but it's actually not that much.

Because they wanted a lot of chicks and ducklings, they were given a cheaper price, calculated at 8 cents per bird, and they bought a total of 3,000 chickens and ducklings.

The chickens and ducks numbered 1,500 each. With the remaining money, Tan Dingguo ordered bran and some millet from the county.

After all, chicks and ducklings are unlikely to grow up easily if they don't eat some millet when they are young.