On the tenth year of the natural disaster, I went to farm with me

Chapter 694: Cannibalism

After planting the bamboo, it was already evening.

Xia Qing took the sheep boss and carried a bamboo basket to catch chickens in the breeding greenhouse.

After the weasel family moved out of the sheep shed, Xia Qing cleaned up the chicken coop and chicken pen at home. In the evening, when the chickens were resting on the shelves, she took the chickens that were not hatching eggs or carrying chicks back to the chicken coop.

As more and more chicks hatched, the small chicken pen in the greenhouse became more and more crowded. If a batch of older chickens were not moved out, a stampede might occur.

Moreover, it is already mid-March, the daytime temperature has reached 20 degrees, and it will not drop below zero at night. The adult chickens can be semi-free-range outside, and the chicken coop in the breeding greenhouse with a higher safety factor can be left for the hens incubating eggs, hens with chicks and chicks, pregnant rabbits, and spring fish with a belly full of fish eggs.

The chickens are fine. The female rabbits need a quiet environment for giving birth, but the black-feathered roosters start stretching their necks to practice their voices at around four in the morning every day. It's too noisy.

In order not to disturb the rabbits and hens brooding on their nests, Xia Qing did not let the chickens make any noise when catching them.

How did you do it?
When you catch a chicken, just pinch its beak and wings to tie it up.

The first thing Xia Qing captured was the evolved black-feathered rooster. Unexpectedly, after Xia Qing gagged and tied up the rooster and stuffed it into a cage, the white-feathered hen got angry and jumped out of the nest, clucking and trying to peck Xia Qing's hand.

It was very fast, but unfortunately the light was too dim and its night vision was very poor. Not only did it fail to peck Xia Qing when it rushed over, but she also grabbed it and tied it up.

This chicken was sitting on its nest and couldn't be taken back to the chicken coop, so Xia Qing put it aside and continued to catch the hens that were not sitting on their nests.

The other green lantern chickens were not evolved species, so Xia Qing easily caught all of them and stuffed them into a cage for the big sheep to carry them home.

After Xia Qing untied the rope on the white-feathered hen, the advanced evolved chicken pecked her hand hard.

Even if a chicken had advanced evolution, it would not cause any substantial harm to Xia Qing, who was wearing snakeskin gloves. She flicked the white-feathered hen's head, touched the Yishi particles on the chicken's neck, and let the chicken go.

"You heartless little thing, keep hatching the eggs. If you can't hatch ten chicks, you'll be wasting my investment in you!"

After saying that, Xia Qing turned on the lights in the breeding greenhouse.

The white-feathered hen clucked and turned around twice before returning to her nest to continue incubating eggs. The remaining hens, either sitting on nests or carrying chicks, had not moved at all since Xia Qing started catching chickens.

After Xia Qing added enough drinking water to the chickens, she turned to look at the female rabbit in the rabbit cage. After confirming that it was fine and not frightened, Xia Qing gave it enough water and grass before turning off the lights. She went to the greenhouse next door to pick two cucumbers, cut a handful of leeks, and went home to cook.

After walking out of the greenhouse, Xia Qing stopped and listened carefully for a while, making sure that everything was normal in the breeding greenhouse before heading towards home.

She was being so cautious because the pregnant rabbit had started plucking the hair from her belly that morning.

This made Xia Qing very happy. Because after the evolution of Blue Star, it was difficult to raise rabbits caught from the wild and successfully reproduce. So even if the wild rabbit was pregnant, Xia Qing was worried whether it could successfully give birth to and raise the baby rabbits.

Now, the mother rabbit begins to pluck her fur to build a warm and comfortable nest, which means that she will give birth to baby rabbits in the next two days.

This is really a very good sign. After having the second generation of chickens, her territory will soon have the second generation of rabbits!
Xia Qing hummed a little tune as she returned home and put the chickens in the cage into the chicken coop. The black-feathered rooster proudly circled the chicken coop, then jumped onto the shelf to continue resting. After the hens also rested, Xia Qing turned off the lights in the chicken coop and took Yang Laoda back to the house.

Xia Qing was busy from morning till night, feeling tired and fulfilled. Listening to the chats of the lords and the broadcast, Xia Qing began to prepare dinner. Because she was tired, she had to treat herself well. Xia Qing took out a few ribs from the refrigerator and made a ribs and bamboo shoot soup, fried eggs with leeks and smashed cucumbers.

They picked two cucumbers in total, one for her and one for Yang Lao Da.

After eating her fill, Xia Qing listened to the broadcast on farming knowledge, left Yang Lao Da at home, and went out to inspect the territory.

The cameras cannot cover every corner of the territory, so after the second brother left, Xia Qing would patrol the territory twice every night to feel at ease.

Everything was normal the first time. During the second inspection at 10 o'clock in the evening, when Xia Qing walked outside the breeding greenhouse, he heard an abnormal creaking sound.

This is... the sound of a carnivore gnawing on its prey!

Xia Qing rushed in with a gun in hand. When she saw the scene in the rabbit cage clearly, she pursed her lips.

Good news: her rabbits finally gave birth.

Bad news: A mother rabbit is eating her newborn babies.

Xia Qing put away the gun, tiptoed forward, took out the half-eaten rabbit, and put it into the bag.

After confirming again that there was enough water and food in the rabbit cage, Xia Qing stepped aside and watched the female rabbit quietly.

The books on rabbit breeding that she collected specifically introduced the phenomenon of mother rabbits eating their newborn rabbits, which is called "cannibalism."

The reason for this phenomenon may be that the mother rabbit is malnourished, lacks water during delivery, or is disturbed by noise and causes stress behavior. Another possibility is that the mother rabbit does not have strong maternal instincts.

First, we can rule out the lack of water as a reason, because there is unpolluted spring water in the rabbit cage.
Secondly, stress behavior caused by being frightened can be ruled out. It has been four hours since she moved the chickens out, and the rabbit has been very quiet in the past few hours, with no stress response.

The third is nutrition. Xia Qing feeds the rabbits with green light plants. Worried that the pregnant rabbits are not getting enough nutrition, she also adds a small amount of salt, wheat bran and corn to the hay of the mother rabbits according to the feed formula in the book. Under her feeding, the three rabbits are all plump and do not seem to be lacking in nutrition. Whether they are actually lacking in nutrition or not, we have to wait for the test to know.

At present, the most likely reason why this mother rabbit eats her cubs is that her maternal instinct is not strong.

This left Xia Qing somewhat helpless.

Ten minutes later, after the mother rabbit gave birth to the second rabbit, she began to lick the little rabbit, which is normal behavior.

But as she was licking, Xia Qing heard a faint "squeak" from a newborn rabbit and immediately rushed over.

When she took the little rabbit out, she found that its skin had been licked by the mother rabbit.

Xia Qing frowned, and immediately disinfected and applied medicine to the little rabbit, and placed it in a small basket that had been prepared in advance.

From the third, fourth, to the sixth little rabbit, without exception, the mother rabbit licked first and then bit. So, Xia Qing's basket had five more little rabbits that were injured at birth.