A comedy about Krushchev's 'Virgin Lands' project, to transform the barren and inhospitable spaces of the vast Soviet Union into fertile agricultural plains. A classically Socialist-Realist narrative of an individual's 're-education'. Zhenia, a hapless idler, arrives with a band of enthusiastic young Konsomol members to build a new town in the steppe. Although his dream, like that of all the young participants, is 'to become a tractor driver and a hero', he isn't prepared to work for the honour.

High in the mountains of the Trans-Ili Alatau there is an experimental station of the Kazakh Institute of Animal Husbandry. A young scientist, Jacques Dosanov (Shaken Aimanov), is working on breeding a new breed of sheep, trying to cross a merino sheep and a wild argali ram. With great difficulty, he manages to catch argali in the mountains. Datsanov and his assistant Saule take care of five sheep fertilized by a wild ram. But in difficult mountain conditions, four queens died, and the only lamb born from the fifth sheep was killed by an accidental shot by a hunter. However, Hasanov does not give up. He undertakes to repeat his experience, this time on an immeasurably large scale. A few years later, the scientist managed to grow a whole flock of archaromerinos.

Old shepherd Serkebai seeks a second lambing from his flock, but kolkhoz chairman Aisary, citing lack of pasture and water, urges slaughtering the sheep. Defying him, Serkebai leads the flock across the Syr Darya into the Kyzyl Kum desert with several kolkhoz workers and his daughter Marzhan. After days without finding a well, Serkebai gives leadership to Kundebai and departs alone to die in the sands, followed by the sheep. Searching for her father, Marzhan meets hydrogeologists drilling an artesian well, where she falls in love with geologist Imash. The team rescues Serkebai’s group, and water bursts from the well, forming a lake to which the entire kolkhoz soon relocates.