Breeding Plan

If they wanted to raise wild rabbits, the best option would actually be to fence off a whole breeding ground.

Of course, they did not have the energy for that right now, so they would make do with a rabbit hutch first.

Considering the sharp teeth of wild rabbits, if they made a hutch by weaving bark rope or grass rope, the rabbits might well gnaw through it and escape in a single night if no one was paying attention.

They had to use a sturdier material—something the rabbits could not easily chew through.

At present, the only material they could find was wooden planks.

After all, the former Black Moon Tribe had been a major producer of Great Shield Soldiers.

Although Zhou Xu had obtained the other side's Truth, he had no intention of copying their tactics wholesale.

The former leader of the Black Moon Tribe's tactics, to put it bluntly, were to have all the tribal warriors raise great shields to protect themselves, forming an iron-barrel defense around him, while he acted as the core and main damage dealer.

The problem was that with the Skeleton Control ability, he could not serve as the main damage dealer.

He could occupy a support-oriented attrition role, but he lacked the ability to take control of the battlefield and decide victory or defeat at a critical moment. He simply could not set the tempo.

At the beginning of a battle, sending Skeleton Soldiers to wear down the enemy would be perfectly fine.

But the enemy was not stupid. There was no way they would simply let him whittle them down to death for the entire battle.

The Skeleton Soldiers were far too weak. If the enemy launched a surprise attack, what could a dozen or so skeletons possibly hold back? Even if that number doubled, thirty-odd still would not be enough.

Considering the tribe's current size, Zhou Xu estimated that he would need at least fifty skeletons, and to achieve a qualitative change, probably more than a hundred.

And that was under the premise that the opposing tribe had only thirty-odd people.

Following that line of thought, once the enemy launched a surprise attack in the face of the Skeleton Soldiers' attrition tactics, the skeletons' pace would make it very difficult for them to catch up.

That would leave the Great Shield Soldiers awkwardly facing the enemy troops alone, while the advantage of having Skeleton Soldiers would instantly become impossible to bring into play.

Moreover, Great Shield Soldiers—heavy infantry carrying great shields—had hardly any advantage in a chaotic battle of this scale.

Following Zhou Xu's tactical thinking, raising a whole mass of Great Shield Soldiers just to play this kind of turtle-shell defense would be a terrible waste.

In his tactics, he would not eliminate this type of soldier entirely, but he certainly did not need so many of them.

The ready-made great shields were just what he needed now. He could dismantle them into wooden planks and use them to make rabbit hutches.

Considering that wild rabbits were now an important food resource, they would naturally be raised inside the tribe. After finding a suitable spot, Zhou Xu took a branch, drew a rectangle on the ground, and then called over a tribal member.

"Come here. Dig away the soil inside the area I drew. Don't dig deep—just remove one layer."

After giving that order, Zhou Xu immediately turned around and began dismantling the wooden planks. Only he knew how this rabbit hutch was supposed to be made; at most, the others could help him with some manual labor.

Considering that the number of wild rabbits they raised would definitely increase later, he had enclosed a relatively large area.

However, since Zhou Xu had only asked him to remove the top layer of soil, the overall work was still progressing fairly quickly.

"Chief, I'm done digging."

Hearing the report, Zhou Xu, who was busy wrestling with the wooden planks, raised his head and glanced over.

"Good. Next, spread those gravel pieces evenly across the area where you removed the soil."

There was no need to say more. Zhou Xu clearly intended to lay a stone floor for the rabbit hutch. His current plan was to plant these suitable wooden planks around the perimeter at regular intervals, forming the hutch.

The greatest advantages of doing it this way were that it was convenient, simple, and saved effort. The only potential risk was that the floor beneath the hutch was still soil.

Rabbits could dig burrows too. There was no guarantee they would not dig their way out—or loosen the soil and cause the wooden planks to topple. To prevent those possibilities, Zhou Xu's solution was already clear.

They could not dig through stone, could they?

There was already plenty of leftover gravel from shaping stone tools inside the camp. Spreading it there was just right.

Then, once the wooden planks were placed around it, a simple rabbit hutch was soon complete.

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

The "roof" could not remain open like this forever. It was not that he feared the wild rabbit inside might jump out—the hutch was about as tall as a person, and jumping out would not be easy.

What he mainly feared were the birds of prey on the grasslands coming to target his wild rabbits.

Previously, when wild rabbits hid in the grass and burrows, those raptors had to put in some effort to catch them. But if he raised the rabbits outdoors in this hutch—

would all kinds of birds of prey soon be lining up every day to stop by his place and check in for a meal?

So the rabbit hutch had to have a cover!

It would not take much effort. He only needed to take three great-shield door panels and place them over the top. That would basically do it.

Of course, after finishing the rabbit hutch, Zhou Xu did not forget to get the rabbit something to eat.

This raised a question: What did you feed rabbits?

Surely most people's first reaction would be carrots and leafy greens.

That answer was completely wrong!

Rabbits could not use things with such high water content as their staple food. If they ate too much, they would develop diarrhea, and might even die from it...

They were herbivores. They ate grass—and it had to be hay, generally Timothy hay as their staple food.

As for why Zhou Xu knew so much about this—

there had been a time when he had always wanted to raise some kind of pet, so he had researched practically every animal commonly kept as a pet, including rabbits, of course.

Zhou Xu's decision to raise rabbits in this primitive world was undoubtedly based on that very fact.

Rabbits could survive on hay, and hay suitable for rabbits grew everywhere around their burrows. Raising rabbits would not place much food pressure on their tribe.

On top of that, rabbits reproduced rapidly. One country had once suffered a rabbit infestation that spiraled into a disaster. They were not difficult to raise, and once the breeding succeeded and reached a certain scale, the tribe would have a stable source of meat!

All things considered, this was undoubtedly the most cost-effective choice at present.

When he tossed the hay he had casually pulled up on the way back into the freshly completed rabbit hutch, the rabbit did not immediately pounce on it.

That made sense. Rabbits had always been timid—so timid that they could even be frightened to death.

From the moment they were captured to the moment they were locked inside the hutch, the rabbit had surely been terrified. Under such stress, it was normal for it not to eat. He would just leave it there for now.

He did not have time to stand around watching this rabbit. In a little while, he still had to make a trip back to Salt Lake Camp.

He had not returned to Salt Lake Camp even once since arriving at Black Moon Camp.

Although, considering the geographical situation, the tribe's development would be centered entirely around Black Moon Camp in the future, Salt Lake Camp possessed two major resources—coal mines and salt—and he definitely could not abandon it.

For that reason, he had to hurry back and make some arrangements.