Iron Harvest: When Farming Becomes Conquest
Chapter 127 - 29: Silage_2

Chapter 127: Chapter 29: Silage_2

Roman saw the increasing number of livestock younglings and knew that they couldn’t do without a large amount of fresh fodder in the future.

At this time, silage was the only choice.

Fodder stored this way could still provide rich nourishment for the livestock in winter, was high in sugar content, easy to absorb, and improved digestion.

From a human perspective, this method was akin to the difference between raw meat and grilled meat, and grilled meat could be stored for a longer period.

Roman needed to harvest the grass massively with scythes when the growth was at its peak, use the chopper made by Lax to shred it, and finally store it in a cellar to ferment.

Grass alone was not enough.

Roman would also turn five hundred acres of soybean stalks and green beans into silage to meet all the livestock’s fodder needs during winter and early spring.

The previous method of free-range and grazing wasn’t suitable for large-scale breeding.

They must be kept in enclosures, their exercise reduced, and their meat production rate increased.

He planned to breed a thousand pigs, two thousand sheep, and over five thousand chickens.

He would also add the pulling horses and plowing cattle from the livestock sheds, and including this batch of wild horses, he estimated he would need about a thousand large animals more.

Without three million kilograms of silage, they wouldn’t make it through the winter.

The required amount was enormous; it needed enough time and manpower, chopping with the chopper required manpower, and so did digging pits and building walls.

With the intended scale, without a thousand laborers, it was impossible to take care of all the livestock. That meant a quarter of Sige Town’s population would be tied to this job.

When it was impossible to enhance overall labor efficiency, the only option was to settle for less.

This was also a drawback of scale breeding under unsuitable conditions, many tasks had to be done purely manually.

Fortunately, all the animals were younglings now, not too difficult to breed, giving Roman ample time.

He wanted the livestock to still gain weight in winter, hence he dispatched Daken to buy young livestock, and the newly arrived young animals were more numerous with each ship.

The upstream merchants also knew about this situation and were very willing to send livestock younglings, unsuitable for winter breeding, to Sige Town, seeing it as a profit-making opportunity.

...

After autumn began, the high temperatures faded, and the air turned refreshingly cool.

Roman rode a fine horse towards the northwest.

Another benefit of road construction was there.

That was more resource acquisition points.

A hundred-kilometer dirt road would inevitably pass through various terrains, including a piece of grassland along the way.

The vast green fields, a lush natural pasture, were perfect for building new breeding grounds, reducing manpower significantly.

Roman came here not just to survey the terrain but also because he had received news.

Someone had spotted a herd of wild horses on this natural pasture.

...

Roman, wearing a straw hat and riding a fine horse, roamed the green wilderness, searching for traces of the wild horses.

Soon, he found the herd here.

It was about seventeen or eighteen in size.

Roman felt there had to be more than one herd in this basin, otherwise, it couldn’t sustain the population’s reproduction; any slight disturbance would lead to extinction.

The herd of wild horses wasn’t very familiar with humans and thus wasn’t very fearful. Upon seeing Roman, they approached him, and communicated with the white horse he sat on through smell and neighing.

After observing, he felt somewhat disappointed.

The quality of this herd of wild horses wasn’t good, their body length was about two meters, shoulder height one and a half meters, similar to wild donkeys, not even close to the tall and robust plateau warhorses from the east, and their sandy brown fur was neither pretty nor lush.

To form a cavalry unit with them...

It wasn’t impossible, but it was indeed a stretch.

They lack endurance, don’t dare to charge, and can only be used for transportation, not even strong enough to pull carts. They require high-quality feed and special training.

There was no way around it, wild horses couldn’t even become pack horses without crossbreeding and selective breeding.

But this was an unexpected fortune, having them was already a boon.

This was a gift from nature.

Roman spent the whole day riding across this natural pasture, searching everywhere for herds of wild horses. He found quite a number of herds, about ten in total, some more, some less, adding up to two or three hundred.

In the market, they would cost between four and five hundred Gold Coins each.

Roman didn’t care much about money—he’d even found a gold mine awaiting development.

But horses were something money couldn’t easily buy.

This fully proved the saying that a horse doesn’t get fat without grazing at night.

Even though wild horses were hard to tame and required professional horse tamers,

there were only coachmen here to feed and take care of the horses. It wasn’t known how long it would take to tame them, possibly several months.

Roman drew a detailed map of the grassland on paper, marking the approximate locations of the wild horse herds.

The increasingly cool weather made it quite comfortable for Roman to complete this survey work.

The grassland flourished with wild grass, like an endless green ocean, the long blades of grass undulating like waves.

Unfortunately, it was too far.

Sige Town’s reach didn’t extend here.

Roman returned to Origin Manor and handed over the distribution map of the wild horses to Seth, asking him to make a plan to capture them all at once. Then he went to check on the progress of the breeding farm construction.

The construction team worked swiftly, led by more than thirty masons, and the chicken coop was already taking shape.

These masons had previous experience with brick building and could quickly adapt to similar constructions.

After all, building walls really wasn’t difficult, and Roman wasn’t constructing anything complex.

The chicken coop was simple in structure, with adequate ventilation, and internal wooden slatted cages with manure boards underneath.

Aiming to reduce land usage, save on feed, and prevent disease.

But eggs shouldn’t be put all in one basket.

They were raised separately to avoid losing them all to a potential disease.

Breeder hens would be specially selected and raised separately for egg laying and chick rearing, to undergo selective breeding.

In the future, these breeder hens would provide a continuous supply of eggs and chicks, providing some protein sources for Roman’s Angel Envoys and citizens—another part coming from sheep and cow milk.

Butter and cheese types of dairy products were essential.

Each breeding farm covered at least ten acres—in primarily due to long fences to prevent them from running about, and they would be completed in over a month.

Roman kept everyone’s schedules very tight.

At the blast furnace site, Ruto was in charge of iron refining, with a very stable output.

Mining from shallow coal mines and open iron mines was extremely easy, yielding over ten tons per day.

But the more they mined, the more coal and iron ore piled up, unable to be coked and refined in time.

However, the limit of one blast furnace’s capacity was clear—it couldn’t smelt all the iron ore unless a second blast furnace were built.

And Ruto was already stretched to his limits overseeing one furnace.

Even so, in this past half month, the steel produced by Sige Town had successfully matched the amount of steel previously purchased, totaling over ten thousand pounds of steel sent to the ironworks.

Those finely crafted curved swords, spears, short swords, and armor, forged by the hydraulic hammer, constantly left the ironworks, delivered to the barracks, and placed in the hands of soldiers to get used to the feel of wielding steel blades.

Now with wild horses, by winter they should be able to use silage to tame their wild natures and cultivate a sense of obedience.

Next year, he could let his soldiers experience the thrill of riding on horseback.