Decision Support under the Conditions of Automatic Milking Systems Using Mixed Linear Models as Part of a Precision Dairy Farming Concept

The concept of Precision Dairy Farming is, to a crucial degree, based on data collection related to individual animals. In dairy farming, the amount of data per individual animal will increase. Thus, a particular meaning has the use of this data through decision support systems. A particular meaning has the use of this data through decision support system In the present article, the chosen examples of data utilization were the generation of lactation curves, predicted milk yields per cow, as well as test day effects. The evaluation is based on a mixed linear model with the fixed effects test day, lactation number and four covariates, as well as the random effect of the animal. The trait under investigation was the daily milk yields for a data recording period of 12 months and an average herd size of 160 animals. It will be shown how these predictions and estimates can be used for decision support at herd level.