Question: Palomino Farms is experimenting with a special diet for its racehorses. The feed components available are a standard horse feed product, a vitamin enriched oat product, and a new vitamin and mineral feed additive. For each nutrient found in the feed components, the nutritional values in units per kg of feed, and the minimum daily nutrient requirement per horse are shown in the table below. The cost per kg of feed component is also shown in the table. To control the weight of the horses, the total daily feed for each horse should not exceed 6 kg.

a) Formulate this as a cost minimization problem. Minimum daily nutrient requirements need to be satisfied.

b) Use Excel solver to find the optimal decision. Include your Excel spreadsheet as part of your assignment.

c) What is the optimal cost value?

d) Identify the binding and slack constraints and explain what the implications are.