In the outskirts of Chang'an, several carriages slowly slowed down in front of the door of a large chicken farm and passed through the rectangular disinfection pool inside the door in turn. The accompanying horse-riding entourage dismounted outside the door and entered the chicken farm from another disinfection passage.

Whether it is the person who comes in by car or the person who comes in walking, after entering the chicken farm, he changes his boots and coats, and walks towards the huge chicken coop under the leadership of the chicken farm staff.

Today, Pulius, the "Encourt to Beijing" of Rome, accompanied by officials from the Ministry of Rites, visited this chicken farm and felt the strength of the large-scale chicken farm.

When the number of chickens in a chicken farm exceeds tens of thousands (feathers), it can be called a large chicken farm. If the scale of chickens exceeds fifty thousand, it is a large-scale chicken farm. If the scale of chickens exceeds one hundred thousand, it is called a large-scale chicken farm.

Prius arrived in Zhou State with the Roman envoy last spring, and then stayed in Chang'an, understanding the national conditions of Zhou State through official channels, and collecting books and customs of Zhou State within the scope of the permit.

As a reciprocal condition, Zhou State also had envoys stationed in the capital of Rome, Junstantino, to understand the national conditions of Rome through formal channels.

Pulius, who has lived in Chang'an for nearly a year, has been to many places. Now he is very interested in the large-scale chicken farm in Zhou State, so he applied to the Ministry of Rites of Zhou State to see.

At this moment, he looked at the long chicken coops and couldn't help but be amazed at the huge scale of the chicken coop. When he walked into one of the chicken coops under the guidance of the staff, he was even more shocked by the scene inside the chicken coop.

A standard large chicken coop is an iron structure greenhouse with a movable cloth ceiling and glass windows, which can be ventilated and translucent at any time, and raise nearly 5,000 chickens.

In such a chicken coop, there are several long queues of chicken cages divided into several rows.

The iron chicken cages piled in a long strip-shaped shape of "品" are filled with roosters and hens. At first glance, they are dense and numerous.

Each chicken cage is very narrow, and the chickens locked in the cage basically do not have much room for movement. Countless chickens stick their heads out from the gaps in the iron cage, reaching towards the long groove in front of them, eating the feed in the groove.

Or stick your head into the sink to drink water.

The water in the sink is live water, which keeps flowing and does not show any turbidity; in the chicken coops on each step, the chicken manure falls on the long strips of the septic collecting tank. Every once in a while, the water flow in the septic collecting tank will wash away the chicken manure.

At the same time, the chicken coop walls are equipped with huge exhaust fans, and the fan blades are rotating, blowing the fresh outdoor air into the chicken coop, making the smell in the chicken coop lighter (relatively), without the pungent smell that Pulius had previously imagined.

He looked at the spectacular scene of "five thousand chickens living in the same room", and in addition to being amazed, the technicians of the chicken farm explained to the guests the power of the new chicken farm in a timely manner.

There are two ways to raise chickens in a centralized manner: cage and free-range.

Free-range farms cover a large area, and if the chicken farm wants to increase scale, they must be cage-raising.

However, cage means that a large number of chickens are crowded together. Once a chicken epidemic occurs (because it is necessary to avoid taboos, technicians use epidemics to replace the word plague), chickens will be infected with each other, and a large area will die as soon as they die.

Therefore, when the size of the chicken farm is tens of thousands, it is easy to have chicken epidemics. Once the chicken epidemic occurs, the chicken farm owner will inevitably lose all his money.

To this end, many chicken farms rack their brains to improve chicken farming technology, among which disinfection, ventilation and disease prevention are the most important.

The efforts of countless people have enabled the development of large-scale chicken farms. However, when the scale of the chicken farm exceeds 10,000, no matter how hard it is, the disinfection, ventilation and disease prevention measures are taken, the risk of a chicken epidemic is still very high.

As long as the sick chicken appears, even if it is quickly culled, the "infection source" in the chicken farm is difficult to eradicate. As for whether a chicken epidemic will break out next, there is basically no other way except burning incense and praying.

Not that no one has developed various animal (poultry) medicines to treat chicken plague, but the efficacy is not ideal. Whether it is a medicine for treating chicken plague or a medicine for preventing and controlling chicken plague, it is difficult to take on a major task.

Therefore, for a long time, the scale of many chicken farms in various parts of the world was limited to about 10,000. Even in Huangzhou, which has the most advanced chicken farms, there are only a handful of chicken farms with a scale of tens of thousands of chickens.

Later, things took a turn for the better.

The breeding industry in Huangzhou has always been very prosperous. In addition to chicken farms, duck farms, there are many pig farms. Pig farms also face the risk of large-scale concentrated breeding and pig farms, so technicians have been studying veterinary drugs to treat pig epidemics.

This veterinary drug has finally been developed, and the effect of treating epidemics is very significant. The pig farming industry has benefited greatly, and the chicken and duck farming industry has also benefited from it.

The emergence of new veterinary drugs, coupled with the accumulated large-scale breeding technology for decades, has given chicken farmers the confidence to fight the chicken epidemic. As a result, the scale of chicken farms has expanded rapidly, and there are now many farms with a scale of tens of thousands of birds.

A chicken farm with a scale of 100,000 feathers naturally appeared.

Pulius continued to visit with the technicians who moved to another chicken coop. The chicken coop was raised in the chicken coop. Each row of chicken coops had an egg trough. When the hens in the cage lay eggs, the eggs would roll down the egg trough and parked under the feed trough.

The breeder pushed the cart and walked along the chicken cage, putting the eggs in the egg trough on the egg holder on the cart, so busy that he was too busy to hand over.

Fresh eggs are transferred to the cart, then counted and placed on a special egg transport truck for sale in Chang'an City.

The chicken farm with a scale of 100,000 feathers not only supplies large quantities of broilers at low prices, but also provides a large amount of eggs to meet the daily needs of the million people in Chang'an City.

In recent years, the chicken farming industry in major metropolis and commercial ports has grown explosively. Take Jingzhao Prefecture as an example. There are nearly twenty chicken farms with a breeding scale of 100,000 feathers now.

Many chicken farms with a breeding scale of more than 10,000 have gradually expanded the scale of chicken houses. In a few years, the number of large-scale chicken farms will reach more than 50.

When Pulius heard this number, he was a little lost: a chicken farm of this size would be unimaginable if it was in China.

Similarly, Chang'an has a population of over one million, and it may take more than one.5 million in a few years. If it is in China, it is unimaginable.

The population of Constantinople is not yet one million, let alone one million. However, Constantinople was once a big city with a population of nearly one million.

It was the time of Prius' grandfathers. The empire regained the old capital Rome, drove it away, repelled the barbarians on the border, and defeated the old enemy Persia. Everything was showing that the dream of regaining most of the homeland was about to come true.

The glory of the empire is about to come back, but at this moment, a catastrophe occurred.

The sudden large-scale plague caused a large loss of the empire's population. Almost half of the residents of Constantine died. It is said that when the plague was at its worst, five or six thousand people died every day in Constantine.

This catastrophe directly broke the backbone of the empire. The large-scale loss of population not only affected agriculture and commerce, but also led to a sharp reduction in taxes, but also caused a serious shortage of military forces.

The hope of regaining the homeland and reappearing the glory of the empire disappeared. The barbarians who had been defeated by the major legions, as well as the Persians who were preparing to lose money to cede land and seek peace, made a comeback, and the country's situation took a sharp turn.

Prius sometimes thought that if there was no such great plague back then, the territory of the empire should have returned to its peak scale now, and the city of Rome would not have become the sheep pen of the barbarians again.

Persia, which was beaten to kneel down and beg for mercy, would not have the chance to invade several large-scale times, so that the empire, which had weak national strength, would in turn want to cede land and pay for peace.

Population is the foundation of the country. After that great plague, the empire will no longer have the opportunity to restore its former glory.

All of this is because there is no "magical medicine" to fight the plague, and Zhou Guo has it.

Pulius felt that since chicken farms and pig farms could have new types of veterinary drugs to fight the plague, then Zhou State would definitely have a "magical medicine" to help people fight the plague.

Prius stayed in Chang'an, in addition to understanding the national conditions of the Zhou Kingdom, he also shouldered a task that could not be stated clearly: he could find a way to get the unique steam engines of the Zhou Kingdom, such as this "magic medicine" that can cure plagues, and then find a way to bring it back.

However, these technologies cannot be bought by buying them. Pulius, as a Roman envoy, could only ask for information on the surface. As for the secret of spying, someone else would do it.

In order to avoid affecting the relationship between the two countries, another group of people is to act on their own. If something happens, it has nothing to do with the envoys.

Pulius did not know how these people were going. He and his colleagues abide by the regulations of Zhou State and where to visit, they first file an application, and wait until the application is approved, and then visit with the officials of Zhou State.

Over the past year, he has visited many places, seen how steam machinery works, trains, steamships, and the strong strength of this Eastern country, but his mission has not made much progress.

The emperor of Zhou State clearly stated that advanced technologies and products such as steam machinery are not on the trade list of the two countries. As for the "magic medicine" that can cure the plague, the effect is actually not that magical.

Moreover, this medicine is not not sold to Rome, because the "shelf life" of the medicine is less than one year.

Even if the medicine was shipped and shipped by sea as soon as it was made, it would basically fail to work when shipped to Rome.

Pulius was not sure whether this statement was caused by the Emperor of Zhou, but he felt that the other party did not need to do so. Now, listening to the chicken farm technician's introduction of the overview of the new veterinary medicine, there is indeed a saying of "shelf life".

This year, he and his colleagues made limited progress. Although he collected many newspapers and books and was initially familiar with the national conditions of Zhou, he was unable to access the core of advanced technologies such as steam engines.

Spring is here, and a new group of trade and diplomats from China should have arrived in the coastal areas of Zhou. Pulius can only place his hope on those teams that are acting secretly to see if the other party can make a breakthrough.

However, if something happened to these people, they would never admit that these people belonged to Roman citizens.
Chapter completed!