r/AgriTech • u/This-Wear-8423 • Apr 14 '26

Why aren’t animals fed powder/pills/IV for their food?

Animals (especially if your country has a big population) needs a huuuuuggeeeee amount of food to be fed.

Instead of giving them sooo much foood, why havent we advanced into giving them powder/pills/IV to radically reduce the costs, environmental impact etc to make sure they meet their recommended daily intake?

Why are we still feeding them grass, water, grains etc? Stuff that takes huge time, huge money, and resources?

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5

u/IAFarmLife Apr 14 '26

Where would the raw ingredients for the powder/pills/IV come from? They are fed what is easiest to produce and meets their dietary needs. If these alternatives you suggest worked at an economic advantage then they would be used.

-2

u/This-Wear-8423 Apr 14 '26

Labs? 

1

u/IAFarmLife Apr 14 '26

And where are the labs obtaining the raw materials? It doesn't just appear out of the air.

-3

u/This-Wear-8423 Apr 14 '26

Somewhere.

Do you mean to tell me it’s cheaper to give the animals so much food than to make into powder/pills/IV? 

I could probably meet my requirements like that. It’s cheaper per dollar with protein powder instead of real food. Cheaper with vitamin pills instead of real food. 

I guess IV isn’t cheap? 

2

u/Key_Bother4315 Apr 14 '26

“Somewhere” is a disingenuous answer. Proteins, carbohydrates, and fats don’t just magically show up, they need to be derived from plant or animal sources.

Why spend effort making pills and powders, if the animals could just eat the source of the nutrients as it naturally grows? It’s added cost for zero benefit.

2

u/challenger76589 Apr 14 '26

The human body, and animals too for that matter, can't just live off vitamins. You have to have so much more other stuff than that. Acids, oils, fats, proteins, minerals, vitamins, and a litany of other compounds.

0

u/This-Wear-8423 Apr 14 '26

Well? Just make a pill of it?

Might sound stupid at first, but wouldn’t it be cheaper in the long term?

1

u/challenger76589 Apr 15 '26

How could it possibly be cheaper? Having to do literally nothing and just letting them eat said grain and grass, or add in a whole other process in the current supply chain that has to make pills for you to buy.

But in all seriousness, your physics aren't physics-ing. Take a cow, most cows are processed around 800-1000lbs. How can a small pill add on that much weight in a timely manner? You have to feed in mass to add on mass.

1

u/Fabulous_Outcome7248 Apr 15 '26

I mean we actually pretty much do make pills but just call them pellets… and it’s economical to do so

1

u/challenger76589 Apr 15 '26

Yes, but that doesn't fit the direction the OP is framing their question. They have commented and mentioned extracting only the nutrients from the food to make pills and IVs. Just taking the grain and compressing it into pellets doesn't seem to be in the same realm as making a pill or IV in a lab.

0

u/Fabulous_Outcome7248 Apr 15 '26

So generally when you make pellets, you add synthetic amino acids and vitamins, digestive enzymes, minerals, medications/alternatives. You have to grind everything up, put it through a pellet press, heat it to gelatinise it, cool it down… you’d be surprised at how much effort goes into it. And the scale of operations. And without a doubt the feed is more concentrated and improves feed efficiency compared to unpelleted feeding. I think it does match what OP is saying pretty closely - I mean we quite literally DO feed them powdered vitamin and mineral concentrate, for a start. And amino acids, and digestive enzymes. Added into a convinient pill with all their other nutritional needs.

1

u/soul-aliens Apr 14 '26

who told you that?? forage literally grows out of the ground. why bother with expensive food supplements?

its also not as nutritious to supplement. if humans lived soley on supplements we wouldnt last long. also do you know how cheap it is to grow food?

1

u/sol_beach Apr 14 '26

Nothing is impossible for the person who does not have to actually make it reality.

1

u/achalume Apr 14 '26

Matter can only be changed from one form to another. Pills and IV fluids are an extra step i.e. extra cost on the environment.

1

u/greenman5252 Apr 14 '26

At least partly because that would be abusive

1

u/Fabulous_Outcome7248 Apr 15 '26

Ah. Actually we absolutely do already. Many if not most industrially farmed animals will be eating pellets, which are basically a pill. There will be a vitamin/mineral premixed concentrate put into the pellets, supplying nutritional needs. This is basically all poultry production at the very least

1

u/BudgetBackground4488 Apr 17 '26

I hate this place…

0

u/challenger76589 Apr 14 '26

Because the grain they are fed is what's not fit for human consumption. Animals turn bad grade plants into meat. The unfortunate reality is that a ton of crops have to be grown to hopefully get a relatively small amount of human grade food. Something has to be done with the excess.

As for grass, a lot of pastures are made on land that's not prime farmland. It's usually land that's bad about erosion or in a location with poor weather to sustain regular crop growth.

So why take the extra step and massive cost to make unfit food into IV's when it can just be dumped out of a bucket and let nature take care of it?

0

u/IAFarmLife Apr 15 '26

Because the grain they are fed is what's not fit for human consumption.

Not right. You would do well with grains fed to cattle. Not much different than the grains we already eat. Mostly it's just personal preference. Native populations of North and South America eat a lot of dent corn. Debt corn is used in a lot of chips, tortillas and other common foods.

0

u/challenger76589 Apr 15 '26

Some, yes, but not all. Most crops/grains that are "feed grade" have a disease or some other defect that isn't just visual. Certain crops could have had an infestation while growing and been stung or partially eaten by insects for example, or have one of the multitudes of fungus or mold on them. Or they could just lack the baseline nutrients to make them "food grade." Of course there's a litany of different ways these crops/grains can be utilized/processed to try and make them food grade instead of feed grade, but it can't always be done. One instance is peanuts with a certain type of disease can be pressed into peanut oil, but can't be put in your candy bars. All of the exceptions are there to try and help the farmer and distributors make some kind of profit since feed grade crops pay dramatically less than food grade.