Agricultural giant since 1983

Chapter 138
Wuhan, at the foot of Lion Mountain, on the banks of Nanhu Lake, there are lush water and grass, teal grass and wild purslane grow lushly, and there are large patches everywhere.

Duckweed, also known as duckweed, has a well-developed root system. There is a gourd growing on the water surface of the water plant, and an umbrella with green leaves is on top of the gourd. This grass is flat and cold in nature, rich in chlorophyll and other trace elements , very suitable for feeding pigs, especially in the hot summer, using it to feed pigs can cool off the heat and moisten the intestines.

The whole wild plant is hairless, the stems are lying flat, spreading on the ground, the branches are light green or dark red, the leaves are alternate, the leaves are flat, thick, horse-tooth-like, the upper part is dark green, the lower part is light green or dark red, the petiole is thick and short , rich in nutrition, is also a good feed.

A dark-skinned man in his fifties who looked like an old farmer was leading a few young people to harvest teal and wild purslane and put them in a basket.

While busy with work, he also imparted experience to these young people, "Look, the teal grass in this piece is a bit old, and the pigs don't like to eat it; the one here should be tender, and it will be cooked and fed, so the pigs will eat it." It's very fragrant."

Li Lei walked over from a distance, and after looking at it for a while, he was sure that this man who looked like an old farmer was the one he was looking for on this trip, and hurriedly stepped forward to say hello, "Excuse me, is this Professor Xiong?"

The old farmer raised his head, "I'm Xiong Yuanzhuo? But I'm not a professor yet, just an associate professor. Are you here to see me?"

"Hello, Professor Xiong!" Li Lei still didn't change his words. In his heart, Xiong Yuan's works were much better than most professors, "My name is Li Lei, and I graduated from Central Plains Agricultural College. This time I came to Wuhan to find You exchanged some things about raising pigs, and just went to Huanong to find you, and the school said that you were hunting pigweed by the South Lake, so I hurried over here."

"Ah, hello, hello, welcome to come and communicate, but I haven't finished killing pigweed yet, please wait for a while, I'll go back and talk together when I'm done!" Xiong Yuanzhuo bowed his head and started to work again after finishing speaking.

"Let me help you!" Li Lei put down the things in his hands, and then picked up pigweed. Tealina and wild purslane are common pigweeds, and he knows how to distinguish good from bad.

When Xiong Yuanzhuo saw the pigweed he had chosen, he gave a thumbs up and praised, "You are an expert. You graduated from Central Plains Agricultural College. Are you a student of Lao Shu?"

"Yes, Mr. Shu also wrote to you, saying that the "Chinese Pig Breeds Chronicle" compiled by you comprehensively and systematically recorded the pig breed resources in our country, from the domestication of domestic pigs to the formation and development of various breeds. Development, with a scientific introduction and description, is a work of animal husbandry science with excellent academic value, which has historical, economic and scientific significance for promoting the development of pig raising in my country, let me learn from you!"

"Haha, this book was presided over by Zheng Piliu, director of the Institute of Animal Husbandry of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, researcher Li Tanheng of the Institute of Animal Husbandry and a large number of other animal husbandry workers. I just wrote It’s just about seven pig breeds including the two black pig breeds in central China!” Xiong Yuan did not take credit for it.

In fact, it took him five years to compose the content of these seven pig breeds. During the day, Xiong Yuan squatted in the farmer's pen to measure the length, height and bust of the pig; At night, he tirelessly sorted out the investigation materials under the dim oil lamp. The materials he sorted out filled two bamboo boxes.

With the efforts of many scholars such as Zheng Piliu and Li Tanheng, Xiong Yuan and other scholars have jointly completed the most complete and only "Chinese Pig Breeds Chronicle" so far in China, and because of this, it was published this year Won the first prize of the Science and Technology Progress Award issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries.

For ordinary people, the age of 50 is already at the end of their careers, but Professor Xiong has been a few steps behind others since he was a student. Because of illness, he did not graduate from university until he was 29, and he became an associate professor at 53.

Putting it on other people, at the age of more than 50 years old, they participated in a tome such as "Chinese Pig Breeds Chronicle", and they can rest on the credit book. It is not a problem to be promoted to Professor in the future, but Professor Xiong Reluctant to rest, he immediately determined a new research direction.

Hubei is one of the main breeding places for Hong Kong pigs. Originally, most of the local pig breeds raised here were Jianli pigs, Tongcheng pigs, and Xiangyang big-eared black pigs. These pigs have a high fat content, and the local people like them very much.

However, after many years of development in Xiangjiang, the local people have no shortage of oil and water in their stomachs. They prefer lean pig breeds. This is where the problem comes. The pigs transported from Hubei to Xiangjiang are rarely interested in the market.

This is not a trivial matter. It is related to the amount of foreign exchange in the country. Pigs supplied to Hong Kong can earn a large amount of foreign exchange for the country every year, so that the country can have money to import various equipment needed for industrial development. Now the pork cannot be sold, and the earned If the amount of foreign exchange drops sharply, then the trouble will be big.

As the best local agricultural university in Hubei, Huazhong Agricultural University has naturally taken over the important task of cultivating lean pigs.

Xiong Yuanzhu experienced the double baptism of theory and practice in the process of compiling "Chinese Pig Breeds Chronicle", so he naturally became the best candidate to host this project and started his long-term scientific research career.

However, the research funds during this period were really pitifully small. For such an important task, the superiors only gave Xiong Yuan 1400 yuan. This money was spent on building a simple thatched pig house and selling some breeding pigs. There is not even money left to sell feed, so Xiong Yuanzhuo can only personally bring the students to the South Lake to hunt pigweed.

When Li Lei's waist began to ache from work, the pigweed was finally finished. They tied the pigweed together and carried it back with a pole. Professor Xiong lifted the hundred-jin pigweed load effortlessly. Since he started raising pigs, he has carried dozens of loads every day.

Li Lei still wanted to follow him to grab it, but Professor Xiong said nothing, "I'm a guest from afar, and I'm already very sorry to ask you to help fight pigweed. What's the point of asking you to do this again?"

"Professor Xiong, if you don't let me do it, Professor Shu will scold me to death when I go back! I'm young and in good health, so give me a chance to show off!" It was with great difficulty that he took over the burden.

It takes twenty miles from the Nanhu Lake to the pig farm in Huazhong Agricultural College. When Li Lei arrived, he was exhausted and out of breath. Then he thought that Professor Xiong had to walk back and forth several times a day with a load of pig grass. , he became more and more admirable, no wonder he can become an academician in the future, and few people can match this kind of hard work alone.

Bringing pigweed back is just the beginning. The teal grass and wild purslane are chopped up with a guillotine, cooked in a large iron pot, mixed with feed and fed to the pigs.

Most of the pigs in the pig house have white hair all over their body, light head, long body, forward or slightly drooping ears, straight back and waist, long middle body, small abdomen, plump legs and arms, and strong limbs and hooves.

Li Lei recognized at a glance that this is the earliest lean-meat pig breed in China - the Hubei White Pig. Professor Xiong's research is nearing completion, and it will not be long before large-scale breeding can be carried out.

"Professor Xiong, is this your newly bred lean pig?" Li Lei habitually took out his camera and took a group photo of Professor Xiong and his work.

"Yes, we selected many breeds for testing, and finally found that the new breed that uses local white pigs as the female parent and imported Duroc pigs as the male parent has the best effect."

“这种白猪瘦肉率高、肉质好、生长发育快、繁殖性能优良等特点；6月龄公猪体重达90公斤；25～90公斤阶段平均日增重0.6～0.65公斤，料肉比3．5：1以下，达90公斤体重为180日龄，产仔数初产母猪为9.5～10.5头，经产母猪12头以上，已经具备了大规模养殖的价值！”熊教授兴致勃勃地给李耒介绍着自己的得意之作。

"With this kind of pig, it will be easy to sell in the Xiangjiang market, and then we will be able to exchange a lot of foreign exchange for the country!" Li Lei praised. It is precisely because of this achievement that Professor Xiong was elected as an academician and became a member of the New China. Since its establishment, it is the first academician elected for raising pigs.

The two happily exchanged various details while feeding the pigs. Professor Xiong asked habitually, "Xiao Li, do you think there is any room for improvement in our pig farm?"

Professor Xiong is an absolute authority in the pig raising and breeding industry, but he still maintains a modest and prudent attitude. Whether it is an old farmer in the countryside or a new student, he will ask others for advice.

Li Lei was still thinking about how to speak, but Professor Xiong's words were like someone offering a pillow when he fell asleep. He immediately replied, "Everything else is good, but the feed is relatively average. The growth rate can also be accelerated, so that the efficiency of breeding can be improved a lot.”

There must be a difference in the efficiency between breeding a generation of pigs in 180 days and cultivating a generation of pigs in [-] days. Professor Xiong knows this very well. He also wants to use better feed, but there is no way. Just building a pig house, buying vaccines, and medicines is almost enough. How can there be money to buy good feed?
He didn't shy away from these things, and told Li Lei the current situation of the breeding farm. Li Lei immediately clapped his hands and said, "Professor Xiong, that's why I came here this time! There are some things I haven't told you just now." To be clear, I was studying under Professor Shu, but I didn’t stay in school after graduation. Now I run a feed factory and a breeding farm. Our factory has recently developed several pig feeds, which are aimed at piglets, fattening pigs, and lactating pigs. There are pigs in the future."

"After our comparison and testing, the effect is even worse than that of Zhengda Kangdi's feed." Li Lei took out a stack of papers from his bag, "This is a paper we wrote summarizing the comparison experiment, and it has been submitted to the "China Animal Husbandry Magazine, after the preliminary review, you will be able to read it in the next issue."

"Oh? Let me take a look!" Professor Xiong was very interested in any papers related to pig raising, so he immediately took them and read them.

"Hey, your technical system for evaluating the digestibility and absorption rate of feed nutrients in pigs is very novel and interesting!" Professor Xiong is worthy of being an academician in the future, and he can see the last value of this paper at a glance, not the feed comparisons. The experimental results, but this brand new evaluation system.

"Our team summed it up by ourselves, and the practice has proved that the effect is good!" This evaluation system is very helpful for testing and analyzing the effectiveness of different feed formulas.

"There is a young researcher named Yin Yulong in our school who is also doing research in this area. It's a pity that he has gone to Germany for an exchange and further study. Otherwise, he must be happy to see him!"

Li Lei was ashamed for a while, because this technical system for evaluating the digestibility and absorption rate of feed nutrients in pigs was the research result of Academician Yin Yulong in the future. He took it out and used it in advance, and Li Gui almost met Li Kui.

There are two scientific researchers in China who became academicians by raising pigs. Academician Xiong Yuanzhu relied on his outstanding contributions in the field of breeding; academician Yin Yulong's main contribution was feed.

Academician Yin Yulong established a technical system for evaluating the digestibility and absorption rate of feed nutrients in pigs, and established a technical system for pig nitrogen/amino acid metabolism and regulation; he studied the appearance of terminal ileum in more than 40 single pig feed ingredients and 18 mixed diets in China. The digestibility was systematically determined, on the basis of which the effective amino acid requirements of growing pigs were determined.

In the process of building the feed factory, Li Lei not only borrowed the evaluation technology system of Academician Yin Yulong, but also borrowed a lot of his feed formula.

Although he feels a little guilty, Li Lei is not worried about Academician Yin's future achievements. It's like someone has bred some kind of hybrid rice of Yuan Lao in advance. Could it be that Yuan Lao can't breed better ones?
Professor Xiong was sitting on the stone next to the pigsty, continuing to deliberate word by word on the thesis written by Li Lei and Lei Yi, and he was fascinated by it for a while.

Li Lei didn't bother, and continued to study the Hubei white pigs in the pigsty. After a while, Professor Xiong finally finished reading.

"A rare and good article in recent years, with detailed data and rigorous logic, and this evaluation technology system is a groundbreaking research result! Such an article, it is not a problem to be an associate professor at all, and it is only a matter of time for a professor! Etc. If more people use this evaluation technology system, it will be a matter of course!"

"If I had read this article earlier, the progress of the research could have been accelerated! The system you have developed has made a great contribution to the domestic pig industry!" Professor Xiong repeatedly praised.

"You're flattering! What do you think of this kind of feed in the article?" After all, it was not his own original research results, and Li Lei was a little embarrassed by his praise.

"Although I have never used it, I can see from the article that this feed is really good!" Professor Xiong said truthfully.

"Then, if you are allowed to use these feeds, will it help your breeding work?" Li Lei asked quickly, this is the purpose of his trip.

"Of course there is, but we don't have the funds to buy feed!" Professor Xiong sighed regretfully.

"No money, we will use it for you for free!" Li Lei did not hesitate.

(End of this chapter)