Chapter 313: Breeding Bull

When Wang Gude worked as a vet in Mexico, the locals called him "Goodman."

Later, when Cao Chuan was asked by Huo Xiong to "recruit" a vet, Wang Gude, who was practicing in the chaotic land of Mexico, came to someone's attention.

With one-quarter Mexican... Spanish white blood, Wang Gude had basically no obvious white features except for relatively fair skin and a face a bit larger than others.

After Crossing Over, this gentleman solved Huo Xiong's urgent problem — developing animal husbandry bit by bit was extremely difficult. Among the over 200 Transmigrators, Huo Xiong was the only one who had ever been involved in animal husbandry; everyone else showed up when it was time to eat beef, but the moment they had to switch to raising cattle, they all ran off...

Although Huo Xiong had studied biology, his skill points leaned toward theoretical knowledge. He was qualified to draft plans and conduct research, but he was a bit sloppy when it came to hands-on work.

This problem wasn't solved until Wang Gude arrived. The two of them now work together with a fair degree of tacit understanding — Huo Xiong is responsible for the daily management of the Company's business, while Wang Gude handles the high-end, cutting-edge projects.

Today, hearing Huo Xiong shouting wildly outside the cattle shed, Wang Gude, who had been examining the breeding bulls, came out: "Not bad, they all look quite lively. Should taste pretty good roasted."

After patting the cage holding the bamboo rats, Wang Gude called over a farmhand and ordered him to roast the bamboo rats... His Old Self wanted to eat them shortly.

"So, how are they? All in good shape?" After entering the cattle shed, Huo Xiong stood before the railing of a cow that was nursing her calf, looking with satisfaction at the mother-and-child pair before him.

Considering the cement floor, the 24-hour duty roster, and the alfalfa and elephant grass in the feed troughs, the ones who could have a room in this cattle shed were certainly no ordinary cattle: these yellow-and-white, tall, large-framed treasures, weighing 800 to 1,200 kilograms, were called Simmental cattle — a high-grade breed specially "imported" by the Transmigrators.

Simmental cattle originated in the Swiss Alps and are not a pure beef breed, but a dual-purpose milk-and-meat breed. However, the Simmental's milk yield is high, its meat production performance is no worse than specialized beef breeds, and its draft performance is also very good, making it a large breed used for milk, meat, and draft.

This breed was introduced into China before the Cultural Revolution. At that time, its effect on improving local yellow cattle was very obvious; the production performance of the first hybrid generation could generally increase by over 30%, so it was very well received.

The few treasures imported by the Transmigration Nation naturally could not be used for crossbreeding or draft work — one or two Gas Tractors on the Plain are far more effective than a herd of cattle. The Transmigration Nation's future grain base will certainly not be placed in the mountainous Ming Nation; flat terrain suitable for large-scale mechanization, like North America, is the designated location.

Therefore, the primary purpose of the Simmental cattle imported by Huo Xiong and the others is as beef cattle, followed by dairy cattle; draft use is not under consideration.

For the next 100 years, the sole direction the Transmigration Nation's animal husbandry needs to strive for is how to expand the native breeding population of the dozen or so Simmental cattle before their eyes.

Currently, the cattle shed houses eight cows and two bulls, along with eight female calves.

When they were first imported, every four pregnant cows could just fit into one container — in a lying-down position, of course. In the second month after arriving in Dayuan, the cows gave birth one after another... and so the cattle shed gained eight female calves.

These sixteen cows plus two robust breeding bulls are the most valuable assets in Huo Xiong's hands... Honestly, he wouldn't trade them for an armored division.

For the sake of propagating the herd, Huo Xiong and the others had also caused Cao Chuan quite a bit of trouble back then: while the calves were still in the womb, they underwent B-scan screening, so all eight calves were deliberately selected females.

Additionally, the paternal line of the cattle came from eight unrelated bulls selected in the Old World; they are not the offspring of the two bulls currently here. So once the cows mature, they can continue to be bred with these two bulls without exhibiting inbreeding traits.

On this foundation, by establishing records, cross-breeding, and introducing a small number of unrelated breeding bulls in the future, a healthy native breeding population of Simmental cattle will expand.

After arranging the bamboo rat roasting outside the door, Wang Gude came back in and heard Huo Xiong's question, so he replied: "These two are in good shape, but one bumped its leg — too mischievous."

"Ah, it's so peaceful here with you." Huo Xiong shook his head and sighed: "Over on the pig side, four died, and a whole litter of bamboo rats escaped. I'm getting huge headaches from both."

Wang Gude chuckled upon hearing this: "Seems like management needs to be tightened up."

"Yeah, we need to run intensive training." Huo Xiong sighed with emotion: "A heavy burden and a long road."

Wang Gude agreed with that last sentence. Staring at the calf darting wildly around inside the pen, he also said, with a pointed undertone: "Yeah, a heavy burden and a long road."

... All in all, livestock farming in ancient times is the complete opposite of Later Generations.

The ancients did not need livestock with a high lean-meat ratio, nor did they have industrialized feed to fatten livestock intensively, so those pig and cattle breeds of Later Generations that grow extremely fast simply cannot demonstrate their advantages in ancient times.

However, after the Reform and Opening Up, large numbers of Domestic native breeds began to go extinct, or were on the path to extinction.

The characteristics of these native breeds were all very uniform: high fat ratio, slow growth.

There was no helping it — after thousands of years of artificial selection, livestock with high lean-meat ratios had been slaughtered and had no right to pass on their offspring. And breeds that could only eat grass and free-range simply lacked the basic conditions for rapid growth.

What Wang Gude and the others are doing now is no different from those multinational livestock companies of Later Generations: first expand the breeding population, then send various fast-growing livestock off the production line, and ultimately Annihilate the Clan of local breeds like native pigs and native cattle.

So, for people like them, the future burden is heavy and the road is long: to completely change the nation's livestock structure, they must industrialize feed cultivation, industrialize the production of Antibiotics, industrialize the output of livestock...

One Generation's time probably won't be enough.

After checking the cows and calves, Huo Xiong went over to the pens of the two breeding bulls. The bad-tempered breeding bulls could not be penned together; they were separated by a tall feed barrier.

Watching the tall, robust breeding bull, weighing a full 1,200 kilograms, quietly eating corn stalks, Huo Xiong gave a sly grin, circled around to the bull's rear, and reached out to grope the pair of bowl-sized testicles.

The bull, unsurprisingly, flew into a rage, Turned Around, and thrust with its horns, making the thigh-thick railing shake violently.

"You little punk, keep messing around. Looks like that idiot who got his backside gored through last time didn't teach you a lesson?"

"Haha, I was just checking how vigorous our breeding bull is." Huo Xiong laughed heartily as he shook his hand: "Not bad, not bad — a big body with a big temper!"

... After the cattle shed inspection, it was time to eat the roasted bamboo rats.

Bamboo rat meat has a texture somewhat like fish — not greasy at all — so the two of them easily polished off one each.

"Alright, leave one for me to eat tomorrow." After finishing, Wang Gude burped, picked up the coffee pot, and poured Huo Xiong a cup.

Huo Xiong did not drink beer today. Even if it felt out of place, he and Wang Gude still drank coffee... There was a reason for this: they still had very important work ahead and could not drink alcohol.

After a cup of coffee and a short rest, the two of them headed to the second row of cattle sheds at the back.

This One Group of cattle sheds housed water buffalo — specifically, female water buffalo. Nearly 200 healthy female water buffalo were kept in the back rows of sheds.

In 17th-century southern China, the only cattle breed the Transmigrators could currently collect was the Chinese water buffalo. These Chinese water buffalo are robust, tick-resistant, tolerant of coarse feed, highly adaptable, and have good draft performance — they are an important livestock Resource.

However, the Transmigrators' purpose in collecting these female water buffalo was very simple: not to have them plow rice paddies, but to borrow their wombs... Yes, these female water buffalo were to be used as surrogates.

In the second decade of the 21st century, when the Transmigrators set out, technological development could be described as changing with each passing day; a result of high-speed information dissemination was that any technology would quickly spread throughout human society.

So in Later Generations, on any ranch of decent size, Embryo Transfer — a technique that can rapidly expand a breeding population — had become standard.

Embryo Transfer, as the name implies, is the process of removing a fertilized egg from a cow's body and then transferring it into the body of another cow.

This kind of transfer is different from crossbreeding. The offspring produced by animal crossbreeding possess genes from both the paternal and maternal lines. For example, if a Simmental bull is crossed with a yellow cow, the resulting calf is a "neither-fish-nor-fowl" mix, possessing traits of both parents.

In contrast, the calf born to a cow that has received an Embryo Transfer is, theoretically, completely unrelated to the surrogate mother. Because the embryo is already fertilized before being transferred into the surrogate cow, the calf's traits are determined by the two parties that provided the fertilized egg and have nothing to do with the surrogate cow.

In fact, this technique is the ranch version of the famous Test-tube Baby technology... Humans "manufactured" the first case of a test-tube baby in 1978; in 2011, a wealthy businessman in Guangzhou used test-tube baby technology to gestate octuplets... Impressive, right?

To get specific about the Transmigrators' situation, what Huo Xiong and the others had to do today was transfer a batch of purebred Simmental embryos into the bodies of the female water buffalo.

In this way, after 280 days, the water buffalo mothers would give birth to purebred Simmental calves.

When Wang Gude was in Mexico, he often went to ranches in neighboring America to do business related to Embryo Transfer, so he had sufficient technical reserves in this area.

Huo Xiong, on the other hand, was not up to it. He was quite clear on the steps of Embryo Transfer, but he had never gotten hands-on, so today's procedure would be led by Wang Gude.

The first thing the two had to do was go to the ranch laboratory to thaw the embryos.

The embryos About To Be transferred were stored in liquid nitrogen cryogenic canisters. These were fresh frozen embryos that Cao Chuan had purchased this morning from a large ranch somewhere in South America — Embryo Transfer has strict time constraints, so Both Sides had to coordinate seamlessly.

This was the crucial Embryo Transfer, because cows in estrus will not wait for anyone.

You have to understand, in this period after Cao Chuan's enthronement, the import goods of all other trades and industries have already been completely halted. The entire Transmigration Nation is now in a state of horizontal consolidation, and will only reopen for business once it has accumulated a certain amount of flexible import capability.