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During the 19th century, the interweaving of research on animal nutrition and reform of quantification techniques of agricultural exploitation led to the transformation of agronomic preoccupations about livestock feeding practices and foodstuffs equivalence. Apart from scholarly debates, these considerations were first put in use by postmasters in the second third of the century, and then in two large stables resulting from mergers in the Parisian transport sector in 1855, the Compagnie générale des omnibus (CGO) and the Compagnie générale des voitures (CGV). The transition from “isolated” actors, not totally organised in a capitalist way, to large companies having the economic and intellectual resources necessary to carry out largescale experiments and to integrate physico-chemical measurement to economic planning is quite crucial in the analysis of the genesis and development of so-called “rational feeding”. Reducing ration costs remains a sensitive issue, but, unlike their predecessors, the CGO and CGV use scientific expertise to reassure the general public as well as the shareholders that their experiments are controlled, and to ensure widespread acceptance of the idea that physiological processes and economic optimization are not mutually exclusive.