Niu Wubu is a horse household in Miyu Village, Loufan. He has raised horses for his whole life, and his father has raised horses for his whole life, and his grandfather, Gao Grandpa and Gao Gao Grandpa have also raised horses for his whole life.

The horse politics of the Ming Dynasty has always been the hatred of the people. Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the horse politics system of raising one horse in the south of the Yangtze River and one horse in the north of the Yangtze River was established. During the Yongle period, it was changed to a horse in the fifteenth day of the horse, or a horse in the number of land.

The court handed over the military horses to the people and asked them to raise them on their behalf. Although taxes were reduced, raising horses was too expensive. Even if the government opened pastures in various places for horse households to raise horses, a stallion still had to eat two taels of silver in a year.

Those who raise mares also have to hand over a horse to the government every two years. When handing over a horse or recruiting a healthy horse, the official uniforms must carefully check the physique of the horse. They have to be troubled by minor officials and have to spend some money to hand over the job.

During the Chenghua period, the court thought that the horses in the south were short and weak, so the Taipu Temple in Nanjing broke the horses into silver. From then on, the southern horse households did not have to pay the horses anymore, they just had to pay the money.

The northern region still retained the system of horse breeding, especially Shaanxi, which was the main horse-producing land in the Ming Dynasty.

However, as the grassland was encroached on by the vassal kings, the Ma Zheng in Shaanxi and even the Hexi Corridor gradually became deserted. In the end, he could only open a horse market in Xuanda and buy horses from the Mongolians.

Dozens of grasslands of all sizes in the Luliang Mountains were fortunately escaped and were not occupied by the vassal kings of Shanxi and Datong, because the grasslands here were all on the mountains and could not be reclaimed into farmland, so the vassal kings were naturally not interested.

There are many grasslands in Jingle and Lan County. The difficulty in raising horses is the labor. At the beginning, after the spring snow melted, every household had to take turns to lead horses to the mountain to eat grass, and the fields were not at ease. Later, a kind of horse household specializing in herding horses for people was born, which was to help other people gather horses to the alpine grassland to raise horses, and live directly on the mountain in summer and autumn.

The ox Wufa is the ancestral business. At most, his family has raised more than ten stallions, more than 30 mares, and forty or fifty foals all year round.

There are more than a dozen households who do this business like him, including Majiazhuang in the north, Mafang village in the west, Pangquangou in the south, Chakou village in the east. There are more or less horse households who do this business in these villages, and there are also such horse households in the villages in Lan County in the north.

In the sixth year of the Tianqi revelation, Guo Yan led hundreds of heroes to the Shentai Peak of Guandi Mountain, and Ren Liang and Bashanhu also set up camps in Donghuluchuan and Huangcongshan respectively. Therefore, all the grasslands in this area, including the largest Yunding Mountain grassland, were controlled by those bandits.

Niu Wubu and hundreds of horses who had no time to escape naturally fell into the hands of those thieves.

Since then, Niu Wubu and his friends have gone from helping the Ming Dynasty to helping bandits raise horses.

After Huang Congshan and Shentai Peak were captured by Qinchuan one after another, many horsemen drove their horses away, while Niu Wubu and others stayed by Ren Liang to the vicinity of Donghuluchuan. After Ren Liang surrendered, they naturally followed Qinchuan.

There were only twenty-seven horse households left, with one hundred stallions, two hundred and thirty mares, and more than three hundred and seventy foals under two years old.

Because Qin Chuan had to deal with the Ming army, he had never had time to pay attention to these horse households and only placed them in Miyu Village. He had someone build a lot of horse columns and horse circles, and then sent them food and forage.

In Niu Wubiao's opinion, this new owner is the best among all owners. Not only did they give enough forage and grain, but they also gave them new shoes and clothes to each of them.

The Guandi army, who was guarding them, did not yell at them at all like those bandits, but was very angry and brought a jar of soy wine or two to satisfy their cravings.

Niu Wubiao and the others lived there with peace of mind.

On the tenth day of April, Niu Wubiao led his wife and three children, and together with other horsemen, drove hundreds of horses out of Miyu Village and rushed to Yunding Mountain in the southwest along the gurgling Nanchuan River.

The snow on the mountain has basically melted, and the green meadows have grown. It is time to catch the horses up the mountain and eat grass.

Before this, they had built dozens of thatched houses with dozens of Guandi Army in Diaowo Valley on the mountainside and surrounded the horse circle. They would live there for a long time, going up the mountain to herd horses every day until the autumn wind blows and the grass witheres.

There were thirty-six Guandi Army accompanying them. I heard that it was a flag force, who helped them transport food, and would guard them there to prevent them from stealing horses and escaping, and help them hunt nearby wild wolves and leopards, so as not to be eaten by the wolf.

Nowadays, the ground is covered with grass, and hundreds of horses can no longer walk when they reach the slope, and they can eat all the way to the top of the mountain.

Every year when I go up the mountain, Niu Wubu always feels very comfortable. This year, he will break a piece of grass and hold it in his mouth when he reaches the top of the mountain. He will look at the horses eating grass happily, and then look at the bushes after bushes in the distance.

As he looked, he suddenly saw a group of people coming down from the mountain, about a hundred, each riding tall horses, wearing fiery red clothes, slowly burning towards the top of the mountain like a big fire.

"It's Lord Qin here."

A Guandijun next to him said with an excited expression.

"Mr. Qin?"

Niu Wubu was stunned for a moment and soon realized that this was his new owner.

The nearby horsemen also ran over and looked at the team wearing red clothes nervously.

When it was still a hundred feet away, Niu Wubu pulled three kids and knelt on the ground.

Other horsemen also knelt down, sticking their butts and lying on the ground.

Qin Chuan, who was walking in front, found it a little funny. After walking approached, he said loudly: "All up, I don't want to play this, so don't kneel down in the future."

"Thank you, sir."

Niu Wubiao hurriedly pulled the three kids and stood up.

"What's your name?" Qin Chuan saw him with a tall and dark skin at a glance.

"Sir, the younger one is called Niu Wubu."

"Well... this name is good. How fat can you gain from raising cattle and horses?"

Qin Chuan held back his laughter and said seriously.

Niu Wubu didn't know what to say, but just kept smirking.

Qin Chuan turned over and dismounted the horse, handed the reins to the red-clothed servants behind him, asking them to take them to eat grass, and then looked around the second largest pasture in Luliang Mountain.

"Niu Wubiao, how many acres are there in this Yunding Mountain grassland?"

Niu Wubiao responded with a smile: "Sir, the top of the mountain and the gentle slopes around it will have to be about 13,400 acres."

"How many horses can be stocked at the same time in such a large pasture?"

"Sir, if the weather is good and the meadows are abundant, it is not a problem to raise 8,000 horses, and if the weather is small in the drought season, you can raise 4,000 horses."

"Yeah, not bad."

Qin Chuan nodded with satisfaction, walked over and patted his shoulder, and said, "I plan to circle this pasture and build a pasture here. There are still hundreds of stallions and herding horses in Lan County, and I will send them together at that time."

"You have raised your horses, and I will never treat you badly. Then we will calculate the money by the horse. Raise a healthy horse. After deducting the money from the food and grass, we will settle it for you at 70% of the market price. How about it?"

Niu Wubiao was stunned.

After a while, he knelt on the ground and kept kowtowing.

"Thank you, thank you."

Other horsemen also knelt down and kowtowed.

To them, this was simply a pie that fell from the sky.

A mare gives birth to one child every year. The foal can be ridden or used as a horse for two and a half years. Stallions and mares eat about four stone beans, as well as bean cakes, wine lees and forage in autumn and winter. The foal only needs half of the mare and can be sold after two and a half years of raising it.

Beans are very expensive nowadays, and they need eight cents of silver to get one stone. It is a matter of calculation that raises a horse, along with the stallion and mare, according to the current price of grain, it costs about twelve taels of silver.

Although grain is expensive, the price of horses is also very expensive. A two-and-a-half-year-old fat and strong horse can be sold for about twenty taels of silver.

After deducting the money for food and grass, there are eight taels of silver left, and 70% of them are more than five taels.

In other words, every time a horse household such as Niu Wubu raises a healthy horse, it will cost about five taels of silver.

Every household has ten or eight mares, and can produce eight foals every year. It is twenty foals in two and a half years, and a total of one hundred taels of silver is about forty taels of silver a year.

This wage is higher than the salary of the county's minor officials, which is enough to make Niu Wubiao and others grateful to Qin Chuan.

In fact, this model is also very beneficial to Qin Chuan. He is equivalent to buying horses from these horse households at a market price of 70%.
Chapter completed!