Better Pet Care Services is located in rural Victoria, and treats farm animals and domestic pets. Providing veterinary care to the farm animals requires travel to the individual farms in the area, while veterinary care to domestic pets is usually conducted in the surgery located in the town. One of the partners, Dr Al Sashon, recently attended a small business management course in Melbourne. He was particularly interested in the discussions on activity-based analysis, and how the technique could better identify the costs of providing different services. His partner, Dr Jack Russell, prefers to keep the accounting records simple, and would prefer to maintain the current system of allocating indirect costs based on professional labour hours. However, the partners did reach an agreement to undertake a comparison of the current indirect cost allocation and the proposed activity cost focus. The following information was collected. Total expected Use of cost driver* Activity cost pool Cost driver Estimated use of cost Farm cost driver Medication Prescriptions $128000 8000 Surgery Operations 130 000 1 600 3 600 400 Travel Kilometres 56 000 Consultations 56 000 animals 52 000 1 200 Domestic pets 4 400 1200 4 000 Administration Kennel services# Appointments 66 000 Professional 6 000 4 800 60 000 10 000 4 000 6 000 80 000 $520 000 hours *Expressed in units of measure of the driver. #Kennel services will now be directly traced as records will be kept of pets using this service. Direct costs are $300 000 for farm animals and $200 000 (prior to inclusion of kennel services) for domestic pets. Required: a. Identify the cost objects for the analysis, b. Calculate the indirect cost allocation for farm animals and domestic pets using existing methods. c. Determine the activity cost rates for each activity. d. Assign the activity cost to the farm animals and the domestic pets using the activity rates calculated in c. above.