Due to the special nature of warhorses, most stallions would be castrated. Castrated warhorses were more docile, easier to tame, and easier to control.
A small number of excellent stallions would be kept as breeding stallions to ensure that the next generation would be of the highest quality.
This generation's King of the Northern Borderline Royal Court was not a wise man, but he was ambitious and could listen to the advice of others. Under the advice of the "wise man", he integrated the business alliance and tightly controlled the resources of the horse farm in the hands of the Royal Court. He could not easily sell the warhorses.
The former prevented external business impacts and strengthened the local business competitiveness. The latter increased the military strength of the northern border and the prestige and rule of the imperial court. In the past, as long as he had money, he could buy enough good warhorses from the Northern Borderline Horse Farm, but now he couldn't.
In order to provide the warriors of the northern borderline with better warhorses and improve their overall combat effectiveness, the imperial court of the northern borderline would allocate a sum of money to purchase Ferghana horses from Shalan every year. They would then rent these horses to the major horse farms, and the second-generation warhorses that were bred were not allowed to be sold.
The three tribes of the Northern Borderline had always relied on cavalry as their main combat power. Relying on this method, their combat power skyrocketed.
Before the fall of the Great Xia Dynasty, the three tribes of the Northern Borderline treated the Great Xia Dynasty as their suzerain while they themselves were their vassal states. They paid tribute to the Great Xia Dynasty every year and called themselves their subjects.
Now that the Xia Kingdom was destroyed, the Nine States were divided into five countries.
The Four Tribes of Nanman, which used to be a vassal state like the three tribes of the Northern Borderline, had destroyed the royal family of the Nansheng Kingdom a year ago and occupied half of the Nansheng Kingdom. From being a vassal state, they had turned the tables and occupied the territory of the sovereign state. This made the three tribes of the Northern Borderline much more confident and ambitious.
If the barbarians of the four factions of Nanman could do it, why couldn't they, the three tribes of the northern borderline, do it?
Dongqing failed to live up to expectations and was in constant civil strife. It was the best time for the northern borderline to send troops to the Central Plains and conquer the world!
In order to cultivate more combat power, the Royal Court of the Northern Borderline purchased more Ferghana horses from Shalan every year.
In the beginning, he only used one or two horses to test the waters. Now, there were more than ten or twenty of them.
He had planned to buy thirty-five of them this year. Unfortunately, the Ferghana horses were delicate, and some of them died on the way.
Even so, the Northern Borderline still bought nineteen Ferghana horses and loaned them out according to the size of the farm.
Then —
According to the usual practice in previous years, the stud farm bred the stallions and mares. Because the management of the stud farm was excellent and the weather in the northern borderline was not bad, the mares were in heat all year round. The Ferghana horses sent by Shalan were all around four years old, which was the golden age for breeding.
The Ferghana horses rented by the Northern Borderline Imperial Court had a time limit, and the horse farm did not dare to waste time.
This was the busiest time of the year for the stud farm.
Of course, the ones who were busy were the slaves who took care of the horses.
There was only a very small amount of time that they could take a break from their busy schedule. Three to five slaves gathered together and whispered.
"Don't you think it's strange — why do these Ferghana horses feel particularly dull this year?"
Another slave said, "It's because they're not used to the climate. Besides, they've always been sent in spring or summer in the past. This year, they're late, so naturally they won't be as strong."
"That's true —"
It was not easy to be a stud horse. There were hundreds and thousands of mares that were of the right age to be pregnant, but the stud farm was only allocated one or two ferghana horses.
About half a month later, the slaves taking care of the Ferghana horses were horrified to find that one of the horses had fallen to the ground without warning.
They called the veterinarian, and only then did they discover that the horse was seriously ill.
"It was fine before, how could it —"
The slaves were so anxious that they broke out in a cold sweat, and their teeth chattered in fear.
As slaves of the stud farm, their value was not even as important as the mane of a Ferghana horse when they were tied up in a bundle.
Now that their precious Ferghana horses were sick, they would not be able to absolve themselves of the blame even if they died ten thousand times!
Something even more worrying happened. This seriously ill Ferghana horse was still vomiting blood, and its skin was always showing bruises and bruises.
The stud farm thought that the slaves had secretly injured the Ferghana horses, and was furious. They immediately disposed of a group of slaves.
The veterinarian did everything he could to treat it, but the horse still died of illness.
The corpse soon rotted and stank, and the smell was extremely strong, attracting many insects and mosquitoes.
A Ferghana horse was worth as much as four to five hundred thousand strings of coins. Who wouldn't feel heartache for losing so much money when one died?
Because these Ferghana horses were rented from the Northern Borderline Imperial Court, the stud farm had to take full responsibility and compensate for the losses.
In the end, none of the slaves taking care of the Ferghana horses could escape. They were all brutally killed and buried with the horses.
The three tribes of the Northern Borderline had the custom of sky burial. The Ferghana horse was diagnosed by the veterinarian as suffering from a strange disease, so it was also given a sky burial.
This seemed to be the beginning. Just half a month after the death of this Ferghana horse, news came from another stud farm that a Ferghana horse was seriously ill.
The symptoms of the second horse were exactly the same as the first one.
There had never been a horse plague in the Northern Borderline, so they naturally didn't think of the symptoms of these two sick horses in this direction. Even if they did, they would deny it.
As far as they knew, horses with horse plague would get sick in seven or eight days at most, and those with acute symptoms would show signs of serious illness in one or two days.
They had only heard of horse plague from the horse traders of Shalan, and there was no such thing in the Northern Borderline.
These Ferghana horses had traveled thousands of miles from Shalan for almost a year, and after arriving at the three tribes of the Northern Borderline, they had been breeding at the stud farm for more than half a month. There was no sign of illness at all, and at most, they were a little listless. If it were a horse plague, they would have died a long time ago.
Little did they know that there were different kinds of horse plague.
The horse plague in Shalan was acute, and symptoms were bound to appear within half a month of infection. The mortality rate was more than 90%.
This time, the source of the horse plague was not in Shalan, but on the way. Even the horse traders of Shalan didn't know when they got infected.
The incubation period was extremely long. Depending on the physical fitness and resistance of the horse, the incubation period ranged from one to four months.
Of course, once the disease broke out, it meant that the condition was so serious that it was impossible to save it.
For example, the first Ferghana horse that died of illness. Its internal organs were almost full of extravasated blood and thick fluid, and its skin was covered with large areas of extravasated blood.
Therefore, the owner of the stud farm suspected that the slaves secretly vented their anger on the Ferghana horse and beat it until it was seriously injured.
More importantly, the carcass of this sick horse needed to be cremated, otherwise insects, mosquitoes, and flies would spread the disease to other hosts.
For example, horses, mules, and donkeys were all susceptible hosts. Among them, pregnant mares and weak young horses were the most susceptible.
With the second one, there would naturally be a third and a fourth. There was almost no time gap.
At this moment, the breeding at the stud farm was basically coming to an end.
The successive deaths of the Ferghana horses attracted the attention of the royal court of the Northern Borderline. The king of the royal court ordered a thorough investigation of the matter.
It was only then that everyone remembered the horse traders of Shalan, except that they had already left two months ago after receiving the money.
Before they could investigate, all kinds of bad news came from the stud farm. The nineteen horses bought at a high price all died, leaving no survivors.
Each of the nineteen Ferghana horses cost between four hundred and fifty thousand to six hundred thousand strings of coins. For them, the royal court allocated at least ten million strings of gold, silver, and jewelry. Now that they had all died after just one round of breeding, who would compensate for this loss?
Faced with this loss, the king of the royal court of the Northern Borderline roared in anger.
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