Chapter 30: Textile Industry Upgrade

Although mentioning eggs had been a sudden whim for Su Na, after careful consideration, she felt there was still significant operational potential in this idea.

Although farmers did raise poultry like chickens, it was basically on an extremely small scale—a loose, free-range style of farming where they simply let them roam and hoped for the best.

Searching for eggs along the fields and ridges was also one of the rare forms of entertainment for the local children.

Su Na’s plan, however, was to centralize them for large-scale farming, thoroughly establishing the territory’s livestock and poultry breeding industry.

No matter the era, a stable source of protein would always command a high price, and could even be used as a form of trade currency.

Yet the most fundamental reason was that Su Na wanted to strip away the household chores from ordinary peasant women, purposefully freeing up labor resources for the textile industry she was preparing to launch.

To achieve large-scale farming, the most basic requirement was finding a way to increase the hatching volume of chicks.

Relying solely on the natural incubation of hens made it difficult to increase speed and numbers, but fortunately, she knew a few tricks in this regard.

‘Greenhouse Incubation’

The suitable temperature for hatching chicks is between 37.5 and 38.5 degrees Celsius, while normal human body temperature in the armpit is between 36 and 37 degrees.

The humidity for the first week needs to be maintained at around 60 percent.

In other words, an environment that humans would perceive as hot and humid is the ideal environment for hatching chicks, and the same applies to other poultry like ducks and geese.

Constructing such enclosed, temperature-controlled rooms presented no difficulty at all.

The hardest part was ensuring that the heating temperature remained stable without sharp fluctuations, which could also be solved by using magic circles to handle the regional heating.

This kind of non-offensive magic circle, which also featured a stable release of mana, had extremely low energy consumption.

A single magic crystal could easily power a large greenhouse steadily for ten days to half a month, making the cost-benefit ratio perfectly acceptable during the early development stages.

Once the number of hatched chicks increased, the next step of the “chicken-and-egg” cycle could continue.

This meant raising the hatched female chicks until they could lay eggs and transferring them to egg-laying chicken farms.

The male chicks, meanwhile, would be humanely and painlessly destroyed, ground into semi-finished feed to nourish the other chickens.

Unlike ducks and geese, which are waterfowl and need to be raised near water sources, chickens are not picky about their environment.

As long as they have food, they can even spend their entire lives in small cages, which also helps them pack on more meat.

This meant that chickens were naturally suited for highly centralized farming models.

Since she now lacked neither feed sources nor other resources, she could naturally turn this concept into reality.

According to Su Na’s requirements, the carpenters quickly manufactured a batch of battery cages for her.

The left and right mesh gaps of the cages were wide enough for the chickens to stick their heads out to eat, while the top and bottom mesh gaps were small enough to let droppings fall through.

At the same time, the cages were set at a slight angle to ensure that eggs rolled down the slope to the back for centralized collection after being laid.

Hens acquired from within the territory and purchased from outside were placed in groups of three to five in the same cage.

The cages were stacked side-by-side and top-to-bottom, achieving high-density, intensive farming.

At the same time, the hens had the tips of their beaks trimmed to prevent them from attacking one another.

A conservative estimate showed that if this system was successfully implemented, doubling the annual egg production of a free-range hen from seventy or eighty to two hundred would not be a major problem.

In modern times, extreme farming methods could push a chicken’s annual output close to four hundred eggs, though that was with selectively bred chicken breeds.

Su Na could not achieve this number now, no matter what.

But even if it was just slightly more than doubled, combined with her expanded scale, this was still a historic, massive leap forward.

However, compared to the high feasibility of greenhouse incubation and intensive farming, another reform regarding the textile industry proved to be much more difficult.

After visiting the area, Su Na discovered that there were very few people engaged in the textile industry in the entire territory.

Almost none of the ordinary farmers who did weaving used machines, mostly just taking on small, odd jobs or doing mending at home, with no demand for professional machinery.

Finally, in the largest textile workshop in the territory, Su Na saw the most advanced weaving machine of this era: the diagonal loom.

The diagonal angle allowed the weaver to easily see the fabric surface during operation, significantly reducing fatigue.

However, the shuttle still had to be manually passed behind the loom, and due to the weaver’s arm span, there was a limit to the width of the fabric that could be woven.

Su Na quickly thought of the flying shuttle loom, which used cords or springs to drive the shuttle installed in a guide slot, allowing it to traverse back and forth at high speed to complete the weft insertion.

This allowed the fabric to be widened, weaving wider bolts of cloth at once, while also reducing the number of weavers required to just one person.

But once the speed was increased, she would also need to develop the Spinning Jenny to increase the raw material supply rate.

Only then could she fully maximize the advantages of the flying shuttle loom.

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