The Rise of the European Emperor

How good are collies? A shepherd dog can easily watch over hundreds of sheep. As for humans, if they walk, it is troublesome to see dozens of sheep. Because the running ability of human beings is far inferior to that of dogs. If you ride a horse, you can easily graze hundreds of sheep. After all, riding a horse and herding sheep is still very easy.

However, the cost of raising horses, plus the wages of people... Compared with shepherd dogs, the cost difference is too big!

Shepherd dogs only need a little food, and they can faithfully herd sheep for you, and they will never betray. But people are different. People are not as capable of herding sheep on foot as shepherd dogs, but they need wages that exceed the value of food. If you ride a horse to graze, the cost is much higher than that of a shepherd dog.

Therefore, hiring people to herd is far less cost-effective than raising sheepdogs to herd sheep. As I said before, New Zealand’s 100,000-acre family ranch, 28,000 sheep and 26,000 head of cattle can all be handled by 40 sheepdogs, without the need for many hired workers.

Moreover, shepherd dogs have a strong reproductive ability. For example, Bian Mu can have two litters a year, and one litter can have several puppies. As long as the owner has a pair of shepherd dogs, they can easily expand to dozens of dogs within a few years, and then they can graze tens of thousands of sheep.

Of course, it depends on the place. In a place with a low level of development like the Americas, border collies, small and medium-sized dogs with poor combat effectiveness, may be relatively weak when facing North American coyotes, and are not as practical as ferocious shepherd dogs like German shepherds.

However, if it is in the Netherlands, there is no need to worry about this. The Netherlands is mostly plains and depressions, with a large population and a high degree of development, and there are basically no wild animals. To raise sheep in this area, border herds with strong working ability are sufficient. Moreover, border grazing food is very small, one meal a day is enough, which is much more cost-effective than humans.

40 border herds can control several large pastures in towns, how many people can be saved? The township of Marin's hometown in his previous life has tens of thousands of people... If the entire Netherlands is changed to sheep herding, most of the people in the Netherlands will be unemployed... And this is exactly what Marin wants...

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In addition to border collies can grab people's jobs, there is also a very powerful impact - the impact on the forest!

Raising sheep must require grassland. Then, in order to expand the grassland area, the woods and the like are more in the way. Therefore, it is justified to cut down the grass. At most, some economically valuable fruit trees such as apple trees are planted in the front and back of the farm.

Before Philip and the great nobles of the Netherlands left, Marin took them to visit a ranch outside Aurich. In this ranch, there are tender green alfalfa grasses everywhere. Around the house on the ranch, apple trees are planted. It was September at this time, and the apple trees were full of apples, which was very attractive. If it wasn't for the fact that the apples weren't red yet, Marin would have picked a few and tasted them.

It should be pointed out that,

Later generations of Huaxia's apples are all varieties passed down from Europe and the United States. As for the fabled indigenous apple, it was actually a small sour apple called naphthalene, which was later made obsolete by the western variety red apple. In other words, the apples eaten by Chinese people in later generations are actually foreign varieties of apples that were introduced in modern times.

Of course, this is not surprising. With the exchanges with the West, we not only introduced sweet potatoes, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, etc., but also introduced Mexican upland cotton, and fully brought the original Indian Asian cotton.

In this era, European apples were not only edible, but also an important raw material for making apple cider vinegar. Among European apple cider vinegar, Austrian apple cider vinegar is the most famous.

On the farm, Marin warmly entertained Prince Philip and his party. During the meal, Marin also asked the chef to use apple cider vinegar brewed from apples on the farm to cook delicious sweet and sour pork ribs and sweet and sour fish for Prince Philip and his party, which made a group of people almost swallow their tongues.

After eating and drinking, Marin also introduced the advantages of alfalfa in detail. Marin told them that if alfalfa is used instead of common weeds, then more than 30 sheep can be raised on one acre of grass...

In fact, Marin still said less. If you use the method of fertilizing the alfalfa meadow, the pasture will grow better, and you can raise up to 60 sheep. But Marin will not provide pasture to the Dutch, so there are not so many sheep that can be fed. However, alfalfa is a nitrogen-fixing crop and does not need nitrogen fertilizer. The grassland fertilizers provided by Marin are mainly potassium fertilizers and phosphorus fertilizers.

Moreover, the Dutch plain is a fertile and humid place, and it should be no problem to feed 20 or 30 sheep with one acre of alfalfa. This income is even higher than the extensive farming methods they currently use. Calculated, the output of raising sheep on one acre of grassland can reach about one or two gold coins. The most important thing is that it saves manpower and does not need to feed so many serfs.

Even if the profit is only 1 gold coin, 10,000 acres of pasture land can earn tens of thousands of gold coins. As for Prince Philip and these Dutch nobles, who doesn't have hundreds of thousands of acres of land? If it is to enclose public land, not to mention Prince Philip, the largest landowner and monarch, and several other great nobles, each with millions of acres of land, it is no problem. As for Prince Philip, the largest landowner in the Netherlands, if he also participates in the land occupation, it will be no problem to have millions of acres of land in his hands.

If all British sheep were raised, all planted with high-quality alfalfa, everyone would make a fortune...

However, it is also very troublesome to replace all the original weeds with alfalfa. Because growing alfalfa is as difficult as growing wheat. Plow the ground first, then sow the seed.

In order to kill the original weeds, it is best to turn the land over before winter, and turn the roots of the weeds out to expose the ground. In this way, after one winter, these weeds will all freeze to death.

Then, when spring comes, plow the fields again and sprinkle alfalfa grass, and you can get pasture that is very suitable for raising sheep.

However, if the farmers are driven away in advance, it seems that it will be very difficult to grow grass...Because, even if you use horses to plow the land, you can only plow 1 acre a day...Moreover, you need a lot of farmers...

So, Marin gave them a bad idea - don't drive away the redundant farmers, let them help plow the land after the autumn harvest and before winter, and then sow alfalfa seeds in the next spring... etc. After everything is done, drive away those redundant farmers and "kill the donkey"...

Of course, things have to be done step by step, and the group of farmers will not be fired until they have transformed all the aristocratic land in the Netherlands into alfalfa meadows. Then, Marin acted as a good guy to recruit... one after another, playing with those unlucky Dutch farmers...

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To be honest, this kind of "killing the donkey" behavior of fooling the Dutch peasants to help the nobles transform their land into alfalfa meadows and then abandoning them is very immoral. However, in this era, how many nobles are there who are not wicked? Therefore, Marin's suggestion is very suitable for their taste.

In order to help the Dutch nobles realize this intention, Marin agreed to lend tens of thousands of cattle after the autumn harvest to help plow the land in the Netherlands. Anyway, those cattle don't need to plow the land in winter. In particular, the North Sea country does not grow winter wheat in its native land, so it is no problem to lend all the cattle to the Netherlands. However, when the plow was re-ploughed the next spring, Marin could no longer lend the cattle. After all, the North Sea country itself also uses cattle to plow the land...

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