Chapter 44: The Breeding Plan

When it comes to raising wild rabbits, the best approach is actually to fence off a dedicated enclosure.

Of course, they lacked the energy for that right now, so they would just make a makeshift rabbit hutch to get by for the time being.

Considering the sharp teeth of wild rabbits, if a cage were woven from tree bark ropes or grass ropes, one could easily imagine the rabbit chewing through it and escaping overnight.

Therefore, they had to use much stronger materials that were resistant to chewing.

At present, the only available material that fit the criteria was wooden planks.

After all, the former Black Moon Tribe was known for producing plenty of "heavy shield infantry."

Although Zhou Xu had acquired the tribe's True Speech, he had no intention of blindly copying their tactics.

To put it bluntly, the tactics of the former Black Moon Tribe's chieftain relied on ordering all tribal warriors to raise heavy shields for self-protection, forming an impenetrable defense around him, while he acted as the core main-carry of the formation.

The problem, however, was that Zhou Xu could not act as a main-carry with an ability like "Skeleton Manipulation."

He could play a supportive role focused on attrition, but he completely lacked the ability to dominate the battlefield at critical moments or decide the outcome of a victory; he simply couldn't dictate the tempo.

At the very beginning of a battle, sending skeleton soldiers to wear down the enemy was an absolute no-brainer.

Yet, the enemy wasn't foolish enough to let themselves be worn down to death.

The inherent combat strength of skeleton soldiers was simply too low. Once the enemy launched a surprise assault, what could a dozen or so skeletons possibly stop? Even if you doubled that number to thirty-odd, it still wouldn't be enough.

Given the current scale of his tribe, Zhou Xu estimated he would need at least fifty skeletons, and to trigger a qualitative change, probably over a hundred.

And that assumed a fundamental premise: that the enemy tribe only consisted of some thirty people.

Following this logic, once the enemy launched an assault in response to the skeleton attrition, it would be very difficult for the skeletons to catch up due to their sluggish movement speed.

That would result in an awkward scenario where the heavy shield infantry were left fighting the enemy forces alone, rendering the strategic advantage of the skeleton soldiers completely useless.

In a chaotic melee of this scale, heavy, cumbersome units like shield infantry possessed virtually no tactical advantages.

Following Zhou Xu's way of thinking, mustering a bunch of heavy shield infantry and playing such a turtle-shell defensive style was a complete waste.

While he wouldn't completely eliminate this unit from his tactics, he certainly didn't need them in such large quantities.

Right now, he could simply take those ready-made heavy shields apart into wooden planks to build a cage for raising rabbits.

Considering that these wild rabbits were now an important food resource, they obviously needed to be raised within the tribe. After scouting for a suitable location, Zhou Xu used a tree branch to draw a rectangle on the ground, then summoned a tribal member.

"Come here. Clear away the soil inside the area I drew. You don't need to dig deep, just a single layer will do."

After giving these instructions, Zhou Xu turned away to busy himself with dismantling the wooden boards. After all, only he knew how the rabbit hutch was supposed to be built; the others could, at most, help out with some manual labor for now.

Anticipating that the number of captive wild rabbits would inevitably increase in the future, he had drawn a relatively large enclosure.

However, since Zhou Xu only asked to strip away the top layer of soil, the overall efficiency was quite high.

"Chieftain, I've finished digging."

Hearing the report, Zhou Xu, who was currently wrestling with a wooden board, looked up.

"Very good. Now, spread those gravel stones evenly over the area where you removed the soil."

Needless to say, Zhou Xu intended to lay a stone floor for this rabbit hutch. His current plan was to stick these suitable wooden boards vertically into the ground around the perimeter at regular intervals to form a cage.

The biggest advantage of this method was that it was convenient, simple, and saved effort. The only potential risk was that the bottom of the cage consisted of bare earth.

Rabbits were natural diggers, and there was no guarantee they wouldn't tunnel their way out, or dig under the soil and cause the wooden boards to collapse. To prevent such a scenario, Zhou Xu's countermeasure was quite straightforward.

You can't dig through solid stone, can you?

Within the camp, there were already plenty of leftover stone fragments generated from polishing stone tools. Spreading them out right there was a perfect fit.

Next, by enclosing the area with wooden boards, a rudimentary rabbit hutch was quickly completed.

Without wasting any time, Zhou Xu promptly tossed the first "resident" inside.

As for the "roof," it certainly couldn't be left wide open indefinitely. It wasn't that he was worried the wild rabbit would jump out—the height was roughly that of a grown man, making it quite difficult to clear.

His primary concern was the various birds of prey roaming the grassland targeting his wild rabbits.

In the past, when wild rabbits hid in tall grass and burrows, those raptors had to put in some effort to catch them. But if he were to raise wild rabbits out in the open like this,

he imagined various raptors would likely line up every day to check in and have a meal at his expense...

Therefore, the hutch had to be covered!

It didn't require too much effort either; he just needed to grab three door-sized heavy shields and lay them across the top, and the job was essentially done.

Of course, after finishing the rabbit hutch, Zhou Xu didn't forget to fetch some food for the rabbit.

This raised a question: what should one feed a captive rabbit?

Most people would undoubtedly think of radishes and leafy greens as their immediate reaction.

The answer is entirely wrong!

Rabbits cannot use foods with such high water content as their staple diet. Eating too much of it would give them diarrhea, and could even prove fatal...

As herbivores, they eat grass, specifically dry grass, with timothy hay typically serving as their staple diet.

As for why Zhou Xu happened to know so much,

it was because he had once desperately wanted to keep a pet, prompting him to thoroughly research almost every animal available on the market for domestication, which naturally included rabbits.

When Zhou Xu decided to raise rabbits in this primitive world, he had undoubtedly taken this factor into account.

Rabbits could survive purely on dry grass, and the type of dry grass edible to rabbits was abundant everywhere near the rabbit warrens. Raising them wouldn't impose much of a food burden on his tribe.

Under this premise, rabbits also possessed an incredible reproductive capacity. In the past, a certain country had experienced a full-blown rabbit plague. Their breeding difficulty was low, and once successful breeding was established on a certain scale, his tribe would secure a stable source of meat from within!

Taking all these factors into account, this was undoubtedly the most cost-effective choice at present.

He tossed the dry grass he had plucked along the way directly into the newly constructed hutch, but the rabbit didn't immediately pounce on it to eat.

That was to be expected. Rabbits were notoriously timid—so timid, in fact, that they could literally be frightened to death.

From the moment it was captured to being locked inside this hutch, the rabbit was undoubtedly terrified out of its wits. Under such stress, refusing to eat was completely normal; he could just leave it there and let it be for now.

He didn't have time to stand around staring at a single rabbit anyway; he needed to make a trip back to the Salt Lake Camp shortly.

Ever since arriving at the Black Moon Camp, he hadn't yet returned to the Salt Lake Camp.

Although, given the geographical layout, the future center of tribal development would shift entirely toward the Black Moon Camp, he certainly couldn't abandon the Salt Lake Camp, which commanded two major resources: coal mines and salt.

Because of this, he needed to head back immediately and make proper arrangements.