Chapter 128 Chapter 128
On February 2, the dragon raises its head and the spring breeze blows.
Following Grandma Zou's instructions, Ye Qing turned the pork head out from the bottom of the big meat vat.
In ancient times, pig heads were used for sacrificial ceremonies on the second day of the second lunar month. They were also called dragon heads, so eating pig head meat is a good omen.
So before the Chinese New Year, the army farm slaughtered pigs, and Ye Qing did not allow them to touch the pork heads that Zhao Yuliang sent him until the second day of the second lunar month.
The dishes include pork head with pickled sour cucumber and spicy cabbage, halved pork head slices dipped in mashed garlic, and pork head stewed with cabbage and vermicelli. It can be said to be quite rich.
Of course, one of the must-have delicacies on this day is spring cakes. Eating spring cakes is also called eating dragon scales, which is an old custom in Kaoshantun.
If you are in the south, you can already pick fresh green wild vegetables at this time of year, but you definitely can't find that here in the Northeast. The temperature here is still below zero and the snow outside hasn't melted yet. It's definitely not the right time to eat spring vegetables.
Fortunately, Ye Qing had set up a few wooden boxes in the greenhouse at the back before the New Year and pretended to grow a few boxes of greenhouse vegetables, such as lettuce, beans, cucumbers, peppers, etc., so he didn't have to worry about having no fresh vegetables to eat.
With super powers in hand, she doesn't have to worry about the vegetables dying even if she grows them randomly.
It’s no wonder that when she first started doing this, her family found it novel, and people from the village came one after another in droves to visit and learn about her greenhouse vegetable growing techniques.
But no one understood what it was after reading it, and no one succeeded when they went back and tried to do it the same way.
No one found it strange. They just thought that Ye Qing was smart and capable. Not only was he skilled in medicine, but he was also gifted in growing vegetables.
In short, in this way, just like children playing house, her boxes of vegetables did grow well. From time to time, a vegetable would be added to the family table. This winter, it has saved her life for two or three months, and it is still very healthy.
There was no chance of eating spring vegetables for the time being, but Ye Qing’s busy season was coming soon, and she had no time to think about her appetite.
After the dragon took over, the pig farm on the military farm was officially expanded.
The military farm has strict discipline, and the soldiers and volunteers who come to help are all willing to endure hardships, so after Ye Qing and Zhao Yuliang discussed the scientific breeding plan for the coming year, he immediately took people to start expanding the pig farm.
Zhao Yuliang was also a ruthless man. He felt that pig farming was a very promising business. Since he was going to expand it, he might as well be bold. If scientific breeding could really succeed, raising tens of thousands of pigs would be nothing for such a large military farm. Multiplying the number several times would not be a problem. So he planned to prepare for a rainy day and expand the pig farm all at once to avoid the trouble of making up for it later when the place was too small.
So, after a few months, the entire army's pig farm was completely changed. The area was expanded ten times, and each pig pen was neatly arranged in several rows according to Ye Qing's previous requirements. There were plenty of windows for ventilation, lighting, and drainage and feces cleaning were all very conveniently considered.
In short, such a large project was completed so quickly. Ye Qing really admired Zhao Yuliang's ability to take action.
After the pig farm was expanded, Zhao Yuliang urged the supply station to deliver the mission piglets from their farm as soon as possible.
Then, within two days of February 2nd, the supply station delivered the first batch of live piglets to the farm.
In previous years, the supply station provided a fixed number of piglets to the farm, basically 5,000 in the first half of the year and 5,000 in the second half. The piglets delivered were generally over a month old and weighed around 20 kilograms. The first batch of pigs would be released in July or August, and the second batch before the Chinese New Year. The supply station's requirement for mission pigs was that they had to reach 150 kilograms to be qualified.
At the end of the year, the pass rate of live pigs leaving the pen must reach 90% to complete the task. If the required pass rate is not reached, the person in charge of the farm will be punished.
At the end of last year, because all the pigs raised at the military farm were qualified and the task was exceeded, Zhao Yuliang informed the supply station in advance and asked them to give priority to supplying piglets to the military farm this year, and he also asked for the more the better.
The county also knew that Ye Qing was now cooperating with the military farm to carry out a scientific breeding program, so several relevant units in the county did not hinder it and readily approved Zhao Yuliang's request.
Therefore, when it came time to distribute live piglets this year, the supply station came to the military farm first, and sent 8,000 pigs in the first batch. They also said that if the allocation went smoothly, another batch would be sent in two months.
Zhao Yuliang was satisfied with this, and on the day the piglet was delivered, he asked driver Xiao Zhu to go to Kaoshantun to invite Ye Qing, the foreign aid.
With so many piglets born, are they all healthy? How should they be divided into pens? How should they be raised in a standardized manner? All these require Ye Qing's instructions.
Ye Qing decisively took a few apprentices and rushed to the military farm. She first took out the plan she had prepared in advance and arranged the various tasks in an orderly manner, asking Zhao Yuliang to deploy personnel to the posts as soon as possible. Then, she quickly screened the new batch of piglets one by one, and only allowed them to be sent to the pig pens after confirming that they were healthy.
As the old saying goes, a family's wealth does not count if it contains fur. This means that no matter how much money a family has, the poultry and livestock they raise cannot be counted as personal assets because the risks of raising livestock are uncontrollable. Natural disasters, epidemics, and price increases may cause farmers to lose everything overnight.
Of course, there is no such thing as private farming at the moment; these pigs are collective and state property.
But the truth remains that when raising poultry and livestock, you cannot be careless for a moment. A seemingly insignificant problem may very likely destroy an entire farm, and all your hard work will go to waste.
Therefore, Ye Qing has extremely strict requirements for the piglets sent by the supply station. All indicators must be carefully screened, and pigs that may be sick must be intercepted and isolated for observation and treatment for a period of time. Only after the pigs are fully recovered can they be sent to large farms for mixed breeding.
The workload of screening 8,000 live pigs is not a small number, but fortunately there are many people on the military farm. Ye Qing divided all the screening work into smaller groups and then arranged four teams to work together. Each team has 20 people who can quickly take up their posts after a little training.
As the saying goes, "Practice makes perfect." These people were a little unfamiliar at first, but after Ye Qing demonstrated it a few times, they were able to get the hang of it. As they handled more and more piglets, they became more and more comfortable with it, and the screening speed continued to increase.
Ye Qing brought a few apprentices with him to conduct a random second check on the batch of piglets that had been screened. They were basically relieved when they found that there were no mistakes.
After this group of people are trained, they will not be used just this once. With the experience gained this time, when the supply station sends live piglets in the future, Ye Qing will not have to rush to the farm for support. They are all skilled workers anyway, so she can continue to use this group of people and do the work according to the regulations she gave.
From the eight thousand live piglets, more than twenty suspected sick piglets were finally screened out, and a few had certain defects. Ye Qing kept these piglets temporarily in the old pigpen, and examined these piglets one by one, confirmed the cause of the disease and assigned numbers. Those that could be treated and were not contagious were kept, and those that could not be treated had to be dealt with humanely.
The remaining 7,900 live piglets were disinfected and cleaned immediately after entering the farm to ensure that they had adapted well to the new pig pens before they were fed.
After that, Ye Qing provided training for the persons in charge of various positions in the pig farm. He spent three days giving lectures to ensure that all relevant requirements of scientific breeding were fully conveyed before letting these people perform their respective duties and take up their posts one after another.
At this time, more than twenty days had passed since Ye Qing performed artificial insemination on the sows on the farm.
Ye Qing was also somewhat curious and expectant, wanting to know how the first time she bred sows by injection would turn out.
During this period, Zhao Yuliang specially arranged people to guard and care for the sows in the pigpen, and kept detailed records of the sows' conditions every day.
Among the eighty sows, only three showed signs of returning to estrus, and the rest basically ate and slept, and slept and ate. Except for some individuals showing a loss of appetite, there were no other abnormalities.
Zhao Yuliang also always felt like there was a knife hanging over his head. He was so anxious that he couldn't eat or sleep well recently. He would often run to the pigpen in the middle of the night and stare at the pigs, wishing he could stare a flower out of the sows' bellies.
Now that he knew he could preliminarily determine whether a sow was pregnant, Zhao Yuliang rushed to the sow pen first.
"There are many ways to judge whether a sow is pregnant, such as by looking at changes in characteristics, whether the gums and corneas change color, whether the mammary glands begin to swell, whether the back and waist are collapsed, whether the fur is shiny, and whether there is a loss of appetite and a docile temperament. These can be seen in the early stages of pregnancy, such as this one..."
"After two months, you can also observe obvious characteristics such as abdominal distension, feeding speed, rapid weight gain and fetal movement."
Ye Qing held a bottle of red ink in his hand and walked slowly in the sow pen. While explaining to his four apprentices, he reached into the belly of a sow.
He touched the belly and pinched the mammary glands, then looked at the sow's eyes and teeth, then patted the sow's butt with a smile, picked up the brush and dipped it in ink, then turned around and drew a large bright red circle on the back of the sow he had examined, whistled with satisfaction, and turned back to signal Zhao Yuliang:
"Captain Zhao, it's a good start, we got it!"
Zhao Yuliang was standing outside the pig pen. When he heard this, he immediately slapped the fence excitedly and shouted:
"Okay, that's great!"
In just over 20 days, we can only observe the sow's early pregnancy reactions, but we cannot tell how many piglets she is carrying by naked eye or touch.
But Ye Qing had special powers. When he explored the sow's abdomen, he found out how many bean sprouts were attached to the sow's uterus.
She raised her eyebrows, a satisfied and unsurprised smile flashed in her eyes, and she silently wrote down the number in a notebook she had prepared in advance, but did not reveal a word to anyone else.
After recording, she continued to select the next sow for testing.
"Oh, I'm lucky today. This one's mammary glands have become thicker, its gums are gray, and it's pregnant. But I have to pay attention to its diet and make sure it gets enough nutrition. It has a poor appetite recently and eats a little less."
Ye Qing muttered to himself, and the brush in his hand moved like flowing water, marking another circle on the sow's back.
Zhao Yuliang quickly signaled the person in charge to write down Ye Qing's words and give the sows extra meals in the evening to replenish their nutrition as soon as possible.
Then, one after another, Zhao Yuliang was very excited at first, and his hands were almost broken from banging the fence, but he became calmer and calmer, and in the end he was almost numb.
He just watched Ye Qing making circles on the backs of the sows one by one. When he got to the huge pigpen at the back, he saw red circles densely packed everywhere. Among the eighty sows, except for the three that had returned to estrus, all the others were pregnant without exception!
The probability of hitting the target was ridiculously high! Zhao Yuliang even doubted whether this was true. Could it be that Ye Qing was making fun of him and teasing him on purpose?
Seeing the suspicion in Zhao Yuliang's eyes, Ye Qing threw away the ink and brush in his hand, shrugged and smiled at Zhao Yuliang:
"I know you don't believe it, but it's true. In a month or so, you will feel the baby move. You can tell by feeling it."
Zhao Yuliang thought about it and felt that there was nothing wrong with what he said. Besides, Ye Qing never joked about serious matters, and it was even more impossible for her to lie. This made Zhao Yuliang put aside most of his doubts.
Although it is uncertain how many piglets these sows will give birth to, it is definitely good news that 77 out of 80 sows gave birth successfully.
Previously, Zhao Yuliang suspected that Ye Qing's artificial insemination method was just a joke, but now the preliminary results have made him realize that he was wrong. Just based on the probability of hitting the target, even if these sows can only give birth to three or five piglets per litter, this method is worth studying. If the number of piglets born can be further improved, this method is worth learning and promoting nationwide!
At this time, Zhao Yuliang still didn't know what the string of densely packed numbers written in Ye Qing's little notebook meant. If he knew, he would probably scream and go crazy on the spot.
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