Five Hundred and Eighty: Horse Plague in Northern Xinjiang (7)

Due to the special nature of war horses, most male horses will be castrated. Castrated war horses are more docile, easy to tame, and easy to control.

A few excellent breeds of male horses will be kept as breeding stallions to ensure the best quality of the next generation.

The King of the Northern Frontier Imperial Court of this generation is not a wise and powerful person, but he is ambitious and can 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 imperial court, and war horses cannot be easily sold.

The former avoids external commercial shocks and strengthens the local commercial competitiveness, while the latter increases the combat effectiveness of the Northern Frontier and the majesty and rule of the imperial court. In the past, as long as you have money, you can buy enough and good war horses from the Northern Frontier horse farm, but now it is not possible.

In order to provide better war horses for the Northern Frontier warriors and improve the overall combat effectiveness, the Northern Frontier Imperial Court allocates a sum of money every year to purchase the sweat-blooded horses of the Shalan Kingdom, and then rents these sweat-blooded horses to major horse farms. The second-generation war horses bred cannot be sold.

The three tribes in the northern border originally used cavalry as their main combat power, and with this method, their combat power soared rapidly.

Before the fall of the Great Xia Dynasty, the three tribes in the northern border regarded Great Xia as their suzerain state and themselves as vassal states, paying tribute every year and being vassal every year.

Now that Great Xia has fallen, Jiuzhou is divided into five countries.

The four tribes of the southern barbarians, who were once vassal states like the three tribes in the northern border, destroyed the royal family of Nansheng State a year ago and occupied half of Nansheng State. They turned from vassal states to suzerain states, which made the three tribes in the northern border more confident and their ambitions grew stronger.

What the barbarians in the four tribes of the southern barbarians can do, why can't the three tribes in the northern border do it?

Dongqing is not competitive and there are constant civil strife. It is a great opportunity for the northern border to send troops to the Central Plains and compete for the world!

In order to cultivate more combat power, the number of blood-blooded horses purchased by the northern border imperial court is increasing every year.

At first, there were only one or two horses to try the water, but now there are more than ten or twenty horses.

This year, the plan was to buy 35 horses, but the Ferghana horses were delicate and some died on the road due to the unfamiliar climate.

Even so, Beijiang still bought 19 Ferghana horses and lent them out according to the size of the horse farm.

Then——

The horse farm bred stallions and mares according to the usual practice of previous years. Because the horse farm is well managed and the climate in Beijiang is good, mares are in heat all year round.

The Ferghana horses sent by the Shalan Kingdom are all around four years old, which is the golden age for breeding.

The Ferghana horses rented by the Beijiang Imperial Court are time-limited, and the horse farm dare not waste time.

This time of year is almost the busiest and most lively season in the horse farm.

Of course, the busy ones are the slaves who take care of the horses in the horse farm.

Only in a very few times can they take a break from their busy schedule and gather three or five slaves to whisper.

"Do you find it strange that these horses feel particularly weak this year?"

Another slave said, "It's because they are not used to the local climate. Besides, they were delivered in spring and summer in previous years, but they were delivered late this year, so they are naturally weak."

"That's true--"

It's not easy to be a stallion. There are hundreds of mares of the right age and pregnancy, but the horse farm is only given one or two horses, which is not tiring.

About half a month later, the slaves who took care of the horses were horrified to find that a horse fell to the ground without any warning.

The veterinarian was called, and it was discovered that the horse was seriously ill.

"It was fine before, how could it be--"

The slaves were so anxious that they were sweating coldly and their teeth were trembling with fear.

As slaves of the horse farm, they were tied into a bundle, and their value was not as important as a horse's mane.

Now that the precious horse is sick, they are to blame!

What made them even more distressed was that the seriously ill horse vomited blood, and the skin was always purple and bruised.

The horse farm thought that the slaves had secretly injured the Ferghana horse, and was furious. They immediately disposed of a group of slaves.

The veterinarian tried every means to treat the horse, but the horse still died of illness.

The body quickly rotted and smelled, and the smell was very strong, attracting many insects and flies.

A Ferghana horse is worth up to 400,000 or 500,000 guan. If one horse died, it would be a loss of so much money. Who wouldn't feel sad?

Because these Ferghana horses were rented from the Northern Xinjiang Imperial Court, the horse farm had to be fully responsible and compensate for the loss.

In the end, when the investigation was carried out, none of the slaves who took care of the Ferghana horses could escape. They were brutally killed and buried with the horses.

The three tribes in Northern Xinjiang have the custom of sky burial. The Ferghana horse was diagnosed by a veterinarian as having a strange disease, not anything else, so it was also sky buried.

This seemed to be a beginning. Just half a month after the death of this Ferghana horse, another horse farm received news that the Ferghana horse was seriously ill.

The symptoms of the second horse were exactly the same as the first.

There has never been horse plague in Northern Xinjiang, so naturally they didn't think of the symptoms of these two sick horses in this way. Even if they thought of it, they would deny it.

As far as they know, horses with horse plague will develop symptoms in seven or eight days at most, and some acute cases will show serious symptoms in one or two days.

Horse plague has only been heard from horse dealers in Shalan Country, and there is no such thing as horse plague in Northern Xinjiang.

These Ferghana horses came from Shalan Country thousands of miles away, and it took almost a year. After arriving at the three tribes in Northern Xinjiang, they were bred in the horse farm for more than half a month. There is no sign of illness at all, at most they are a little depressed. If it was horse plague, they would have died a lot.

Little do they know that there are different types of horse plague.

The horse plague in Shalan Country has an acute onset, and symptoms will inevitably appear within half a month of infection, with a mortality rate of more than 90%.

The source of the horse plague this time was not in Shalan Country, but on the road. Even the horse dealers in Shalan Country did not know when they were infected.

The incubation period is extremely long. Depending on the physical fitness and resistance of the horse, the incubation period ranges from January to April.

Of course, once the disease breaks out, it means that the condition is too serious to be cured and difficult to treat.

For example, the first Ferghana horse that died of the disease had its internal organs almost filled with blood and thick water, and its skin was covered with large patches of blood.

Therefore, the owner of the horse farm suspected that the slaves secretly used the Ferghana horse to vent their anger and beat the horse to internal injuries and serious illness.

More importantly, the corpse of this sick horse needs to be cremated, otherwise insects and flies will spread the source of the disease to other hosts.

For example, horses, mules, and donkeys are all susceptible hosts, among which pregnant mares and weak young horses are the most susceptible to infection.

With the second horse, there will naturally be the third and fourth horses, almost without too much time between them.

At this moment, the breeding of the horse farm is basically coming to an end.

The continuous death of the Ferghana horses has attracted great attention from the Northern Frontier Imperial Court, and the King of the Imperial Court has ordered a thorough investigation of the matter.

At this time, everyone belatedly remembered the horse dealer from the Shalan Kingdom, but he had already left two months ago after receiving the money.

Before they could find out, the horse farm received a series of bad news. All the 19 horses bought at high prices died, leaving no survivors.

The price of each of the 19 Ferghana horses was between 450,000 and 600,000 strings of cash. For them, the Imperial Court allocated at least 10 million strings of gold, silver and jewelry. Now they all died after just one round of breeding. Who will compensate for this loss?

Faced with this loss, the King of the Northern Frontier Imperial Court roared angrily.

Did the Shalan Kingdom sell them 19 sick horses as good horses and cheat them out of money?