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Chapter 221: Chapter 214 Are You Sick?
After sending the family on their way, Shen Yunfang also hurriedly made her way up the mountain.
She had originally planned to go up the mountain in the morning, but with Li Hongxing’s family visiting, she had no choice. Although she was anxious because the livestock on the mountain hadn’t been fed yet, she still had to patiently entertain them. Now that she had finally sent them off, she needed to quickly go feed the animals on the mountain.
Shen Yunfang hadn’t even reached the slope when she heard the chickens and pigs on the hillside incessantly squealing—how hungry they must be.
She quickened her pace, first going to the pigsty, and took out warm pig feed from her storage space to pour directly into the troughs. It is said that the child who cries the loudest gets the milk, and sure enough, the pigs that squealed the loudest were the first to eat.
After filling all four troughs with pig feed and making sure every pig got some, she then moved on to the sheepfold next door.
The ewes were more refined; even though they were starving too, they didn’t squeal and howl like the pigs next door, they just bleated incessantly.
Shen Yunfang took out a large handful of green grass from her space and scattered it into the troughs, allowing them to nibble slowly.
Having taken care of these two groups of large livestock, she started running toward the radish field—where the hens were kept.
Because the fence she had built around the radish field was quite large, it was still necessary to bang on an iron basin to feed the chickens.
Shen Yunfang picked up the basin and struck it, noting that only a small fraction of the hens came running over energetically to feed, while the rest seemed listless and droopy.
Damn it! They hadn’t caught some disease, had they?
The first thing that came to Shen Yunfang’s mind was this concern. She knew that even in these times, people lacked medical care and medicine, let alone chickens, so she was very worried that her chickens might be sick.
She quickly filled up the feeding troughs with chicken feed, then stepped over the fence, walking towards the listless chicks to pick one up and examine it closely. The eyes, rear end, everything seemed normal—none of them appeared to be sick.
Shen Yunfang was perplexed as she grabbed several chicks for inspection, all exhibiting the same condition.
Walking a few more steps forward, the huddled chicks scattered in fright, running to either side, allowing Shen Yunfang to spot something amiss.
In the spot where the hens had been clustering, there lay three hens, lying down, not perching.
Shen Yunfang hurried over with quick steps and crouched down to have a closer look. Her expression alternated between relaxation and tension.
After inspecting the hens lying on the ground, she found they were all dead, and aside from wounds on their necks, the rest of their bodies were intact—this situation seemed very much like the work of a yellow weasel. 𝓷ℴ𝓿𝓹𝓾𝓫.𝓬ℴ𝓶
If it was indeed the yellow weasel, it meant that the chicks’ listlessness wasn’t due to some contagious disease but because they had been frightened, and Shen Yunfang’s heart eased for a moment, only to tighten again right after.
It was good that the hens weren’t sick, but being targeted by a yellow weasel was trouble enough.
Shen Yunfang threw the three chickens that had been drained of blood into the space and then began to collect eggs from the hen roost.
On the mountain, there were a total of seventy pullets, with about fifty-five capable of laying eggs. Every morning, she could collect over fifty eggs, and even on the slowest days, she never got less than fifty -- after all, the hens were at their prime laying age and she had fed them well, so they generally laid one each per day. However, today she only found twenty-four eggs.
It seemed the pullets had been frightened the night before; under such circumstances, it would take a few days for them to recover and lay normally. That is assuming the yellow weasels wouldn’t return; if they did, then the pullets couldn’t lay comfortably.
She had never imagined that, having raised chickens for over two years without any weasel problems, just a few days after moving them to the mountain they’d fall victim to the predators. What was she to do?
Shen Yunfang was at a loss for a moment.
She put on boots, entered the pigpen, and began cleaning up, shoveling all the pig manure together and then carting it to the compost pile.
As she worked, she also racked her brain for solutions.
In situations like this, unless one could wipe out the entire weasel den, the problem wouldn’t cease. But weasels weren’t easy to catch. After much thought, she decided the only option for now was to bring Taxue to the hillside to keep watch at night.
If that still didn’t work, she might as well slaughter all the chickens. After all, there would be no place to keep them once it started snowing, which was only a month away. It would just mean losing a month’s worth of egg collection. She already had nearly twenty thousand eggs stored in the space. Just for her own family consumption, those would last several years. Moreover, she hadn’t been slacking on saving quail eggs throughout the year. With five hundred quails at home, she collected nearly eight jin of quail eggs daily. Even if she ate as many as she could, it wouldn’t make much of a dent, so she also had quite a stockpile of quail eggs in the space -- over twenty large baskets stacked high.
After finishing her chores on the mountain, Shen Yunfang hurriedly descended and called out "Taxue" at the back door. In a little while, Taxue emerged from the bushes, then shook and wagged its tail, rubbing up against her.
Shen Yunfang couldn’t help but fondly rub its big head, never having seen such an affectionate dog. Every time they met, it acted as if they’d been apart for ages. If she didn’t give it enough attention, it would follow her around front and back, never learning its lesson despite being scolded several times.
"Alright, enough with the dawdling, come on, follow me. You have to be alert tonight and look after the chicks properly, got it? If you don’t, I’ll starve you for a day tomorrow," Shen Yunfang said, leading Taxue back up the mountain.
It was hard to tell if Taxue understood, but it happily frolicked and sought her affection, darting ahead out of sight at one moment and then suddenly popping out from the grass on the side, covered head to toe in grass like a mischievous child.
Together, human and dog made their way up the mountain, playing as they went, and reached the hillside after an hour.
This time, Shen Yunfang sternly pointed out the area Taxue needed to guard. Seeing that Taxue obediently laid down inside the fence, watching her with its wet eyes, she had no choice but to take out a small basin of bones from the space. These were leftovers from making broth, and she had already broken the large bones into smaller pieces.
Smelling something delicious, Taxue perked up again and waited eagerly for its master to feed it.
Shen Yunfang put down the bones and took out a small basin of leftover food from the space for Taxue to eat in the evening. Then, glancing at the time and seeing that it was getting late, she strolled back home, thinking that she needed to heat a pot of water before cooking dinner to pluck the three blood-drained pullets in the space.
Chickens killed by weasels were still edible -- just needed to stew them a bit longer to effectively sterilize the meat.
As she was pondering whether to braise them or stew them with mushrooms and vermicelli, she saw that there were people waiting at her house again.
Without even seeing who it was, she felt annoyed. Why had her home suddenly become so popular lately? Every few days there was someone waiting at her doorstep, and it was never for anything good. Maybe it was time to carve out a moment to seek some blessings.
