Ban Gu and Ju, the two close followers, didn't understand Xu Chen's intentions until now. They thought they could have a good meal after catching him, but they didn't expect that Xu Chen was planning to raise him, so they couldn't help but persuade him together.
But Xu Chen insisted on his idea without giving in. He pointed at a few ducks and said: "Raise them and lay eggs!"
A group of people were stunned for a moment.
After a while, someone couldn't help but his eyes lit up and he clapped his hands suddenly: "Lay eggs, wow!"
Then everyone understood Xu Chen's thoughts, and their worries suddenly turned into joy, and the squeaking sounds kept coming and going.
But it is easy to say, but these wild ducks have wings and may fly away at any time. Gupu flapped his two arms to remind: "Poo quack quack, Moxi quack?"
Xu Chen's face turned dark.
Although he was used to this quack-quack way of speaking, he had had enough.
But since everyone has agreed to raise these wild ducks, he naturally said that he would have a way to raise them, so a group of people gathered around a few wild ducks and exchanged a few words before going back to continue working, and they were all a little excited at the same time.
Excited.
Everyone loves to eat bird eggs, and they are the best food for babies. They are delicious whether steamed or cooked. However, it is too dangerous to find bird eggs in the wild. Everyone does not want anyone to be bitten by a snake again.
If these ducks can really be raised to lay eggs, it is indeed a very good method.
But as for how to raise him, they can only hope that Xu Chen can really think of a good way, otherwise it would be a big regret if he suddenly flew away one day.
"Let's go chop sticks!"
Xu Chen covered the five wild ducks in rattan baskets and went out again with Gu Heju and a stone ax.
An hour later, the three of them came back carrying several bundles of wooden sticks of different thicknesses. Under Xu Chen's command, two tool men helped chop and chop more than a dozen thicker wooden sticks into spear-like stakes.
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Xu Chen directed Gu Heju to nail the wooden stakes to the ground with stones to form a square shape.
After the wooden stakes were driven, the three of them began to use rattan rods to tie up the thin wooden sticks horizontally.
After working for more than an hour, a duck cage with a length of two meters and a width of one meter has a rough shape. However, this is just a frame. In order for the ducks to not escape, more thin vines and thorns need to be used to weave it.
It was more dense, so the three of them went in and out again with stone knives and axes, and by the evening, a complete duck cage was completed.
It looks like a small house with thatch on the top and a small door on the side that can be opened and closed.
Two stone nests were specially built with stones and lined with some hay. In order to induce ducks to lay eggs inside, he also asked Ye to bring two precious duck eggs and place them in the nests.
There is a saying that when raising chickens and ducks in rural areas, an egg is usually placed in the nest, which is called a nest egg.
With this nest egg, the chickens and ducks will think that there is no danger in laying eggs here.
If there are no nest eggs, the eggs in the henhouse cannot be picked up every time, so it is best to save one.
Otherwise, the chickens and ducks will think that it is not safe to lay eggs in the nest, and they will lay eggs everywhere.
Xu Chen had seen a lot of them when he was a child. They were in the ditch, in the corner, in the open air, and even on the dining table, on the bed, on the stove or even in the pot.
He still clearly remembered that one time when he went to school, there was an extra egg in his schoolbag, and he didn't find it until it was smashed.
Because he was afraid that his parents would find out and get scolded, he kept it in his heart and dared not say anything. He thought it was some friend who had been punished by a thousand knives.
Until one day.
He saw a hen sneakily jumping through the window into the house where he was sleeping, then got into his open schoolbag, and soon jumped out of the window shivering and clucking contentedly.
It was then that he had an epiphany.
This is not a serious old hen.
It went off the rails, just like the widow in the village who gave birth to a wild egg. She actually framed herself for laying a wild egg.
He was determined not to have other people's children, so he stuffed the egg into the schoolbag of the kid next door. When he came back from school the next day, he heard the heartbreaking cry of his kid.
Look at the duck house Xu Chen made.
All the clan members were full of praise for Xu Chen's creativity.
He said that it is indeed very convenient to raise it this way, and the ducks will not fly away.
However, Xu Chen knew that a cage alone was not enough. Domestic ducks were domesticated through continuous feeding by wild ducks.
Although it is often heard that wild ducks fall into a flock of domestic ducks and eat and drink around, pretending to be a member of the domestic ducks, in fact these ducks will actually fly away.
Even if they are domestic ducks, sometimes they will be seduced by a group of wild ducks passing by. They think that they can spread their wings and fly, so they flap their wings and fly away.
Regardless of whether it can fly to the south, it at least means that even domesticated ducks can actually fly away at any time.
In order to solve this problem once and for all, Xu Chen cut off most of the feathers on all the ducks' wings with a stone knife before putting the ducks into the duck house.
After struggling for half an hour, it was not until around dinner that a few bald-armed ducks were finally thrown into the duck room. The moment they were freed, they flapped their wings vigorously and tried to fly, but in the end they were powerless and could only stay inside.
It flapped around randomly and made dissatisfied cries.
Seeing the five mallards slowly accepting their fate and becoming quiet, Xu Chen smiled with relief.
Compared with the domestication of other large livestock, the domestication of poultry is much simpler.
Unlike cats, dogs, cows and horses that require thousands of years of domestication, they only need to be locked up and fed.
Because poultry don't need to be obedient, humans only need their meat and eggs.
But animals such as cows, horses, cats and dogs are completely different. For humans, they are not simply food animals, but tool animals. They are a symbiotic and dependent relationship with each other. They play an important and irreplaceable role in the history of the development of human civilization.
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Especially cows and horses.
It can be said that it is inseparable from human evolution. Without cattle and horses, it would be impossible for humans to transcend slash-and-burn farming and enter the era of true agricultural civilization.
All domesticated animals can survive without humans.
This is especially true for poultry. They only need to be released into the wild for a period of time, perhaps after one or two generations, and they will regain their natural instincts as wild birds.
The only difference between domestic poultry and wild birds is the rate at which they grow and the number of eggs they lay.
Domestic ducks can lay eggs almost every day, but wild ducks generally only lay eggs in spring.
Therefore, Xu Chen had no idea how many eggs these wild ducks could lay.
What he hopes now is that these ducks cannot all be male ducks, nor can they all be female ducks. As long as one or two nests of ducklings can be hatched, then this poultry breeding plan will be considered a complete success.