In the field of animal nutrition, it is typically necessary to add micronutrients to feed at very small dosage levels, e.g., on the order of grams per ton of feed. The direct addition of such small doses of micronutrients to animal feed is difficult to achieve for several reasons. For example, the small doses required of the micronutrients are firstly difficult to weigh out. Even if the correct dosage weight of the micronutrients can be achieved, it is practically impossible to achieve an even distribution of the micronutrients throughout the finished animal feed product.
In order to address the problems noted above, the animal feed industry has traditionally formulated so-called feed “premix” containing a tailored blend of nutrients together with a feed diluent. The feed premix may then be more readily added to other feed components at a rate of several kilograms per ton of feed. In such a manner, therefore, the relatively small, but necessarily important, nutrients in the premix are evenly distributed through the entirety of the finished animal feed product.
It is oftentimes desirable to assemble an animal feed premix plant in relatively short time due to market demands and/or production disruptions. Typically, a new plant must be designed for each potential feed manufacturer at its specific location. As can be appreciated, such a custom plant can take a considerable amount of time to design and construct thereby adding to potential costs and production delays.
It would be especially desirable if a plant could be devised that is capable of being relatively quickly designed and constructed. It is toward fulfilling such a need that the present invention is directed.