What is the feasibility of this, deploying it on a large scale?
I did some quick calculations on a napkin.
Apparently there are between 1 billion and 1.5 billion cows [0][1]. Let’s just say 1.5 Billion.
In New Zealand the beef (dry cow) vs dairy cow ratio is almost 1:1 [2], but I assume that countries like India have more dairy cows, so I just assumed that 60% percent of cows are dairy cows.
Apparently dry cows consume around 25 lb (11 kilogram) dry matter per day [3], milking cows 25kg dry matter [4].
Let’s just assume that 1% of the dry matter needs to be replaced with the algae, which is half of what the article mentions. That would mean, that we need:
(1500 Million * 0.6 * 0.01 * 25kg) + (1500 Million * 0.4 * 0.01 * 11kg) = 291 Million kilogram = 291.000 metric tons of algae per day
Just the logistics alone is major feat to pull off, put on a yearly scale the weight of these algae equals half of the trash produced in the US per year [5].
I did some quick calculations on a napkin.
Apparently there are between 1 billion and 1.5 billion cows [0][1]. Let’s just say 1.5 Billion.
In New Zealand the beef (dry cow) vs dairy cow ratio is almost 1:1 [2], but I assume that countries like India have more dairy cows, so I just assumed that 60% percent of cows are dairy cows.
Apparently dry cows consume around 25 lb (11 kilogram) dry matter per day [3], milking cows 25kg dry matter [4].
Let’s just assume that 1% of the dry matter needs to be replaced with the algae, which is half of what the article mentions. That would mean, that we need:
(1500 Million * 0.6 * 0.01 * 25kg) + (1500 Million * 0.4 * 0.01 * 11kg) = 291 Million kilogram = 291.000 metric tons of algae per day
Just the logistics alone is major feat to pull off, put on a yearly scale the weight of these algae equals half of the trash produced in the US per year [5].
[0]: https://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-inventory-ranking-c...
[1]: https://www.drovers.com/article/world-cattle-inventory-ranki...
[2]: https://teara.govt.nz/files/1_183_Beef_Ratios_0.pdf
[3]: http://www.thebeefsite.com/articles/3154/how-much-forage-doe...
[4]: https://albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/how-much-feed-does-...
[5]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=291*365+million+kilogr...