article & photos by John Moody
The most expensive part of animal feed is the protein faction. In the early 1900s, farmers supplemented their animals with fishmeal or certain organ meats such as liver. These were expensive but worth the price given the gains in efficiency. Then, soy was discovered and adopted as one of the backbones of modern animal nutrition, along with the introduction of antibiotics and other changes to animal husbandry and science.