Question:

Fred Perkins has found that adding goats to the product line of his traditional family farm has turned out to be profitable – the demand for goats in ethnic markets has increased dramatically in the past few years. Fred now wants to ensure that he is providing the best possible diet to his animals at the lowest possible cost. Goats are fed a mix of three types of feed – corn, silage and alfalfa, all of which Fred grows himself. He knows that the most profitable use for his crops is to feed them to his goats, but he grows much more of each than he could possibly use for his own herd and is able to sell the balance to other farmers for additional profit.

The nutritional makeup of the feeds, the selling price (foregone revenue) for each type of feed and the minimum daily requirements of the nutritional ingredients (per goat) are shown in the table below.

Fred’s herd consists of 100 goats.

1. Formulate Fred’s problem as a linear programming problem. Clearly define your decision variables as a first step.
2. Enter the problem in Excel and use Solver to get the optimal solution. How much of each feed type will Fred divert from sales each day to feed his herd? How much revenue does he give up each day?

Price: $2.99

Solution: The downloadable solution consists of 2 pages
Deliverable: Word Document