Abstract

PALACIOS ESPINOSA, Alejandro et al. Individual lactation curves in Siboney dairy cows of Cuba. Rev. mex. de cienc. pecuarias [online]. 2016, vol.7, n.1, pp.15-28. ISSN 2448-6698.

The objective was to study and to model the individual lactation curves in Siboney cows comparing four mathematical models. In total, 31,631 test day milk production records (TD) of 3,697 lactations (1 to 5) from 2,632 Siboney cows of Cuba (5/8 Holstein, 3/8 Cebu Cuban) monthly recorded between 1994 and 2003 were adjusted using the functions of Wood, Wilmink, Ali-Schaeffer and Legendre polynomials. The parameters were estimated using nonlinear regressions and the goodness of fit was measured by the adjusted coefficient of determination (R2 A). Values of R2 A > 0.75 in 23, 24, 28, and 36 % of the lactations for the models of Wood, Wilmink, Ali-Schaeffer and Legendre polynomials, respectively, were obtained. The models of Wood and Wilmink described four types of curves and the models of Ali-Schaeffer and the Legendre polynomials 17 and 20 for 32 possible theoretical groups. The correlations among the parameters of Ali-Schaeffer function were higher than that estimated for the Legendre polynomials. The proposed functions represented the different shapes among lactation curves and in particular the five parameters models detected higher diversity related to the rest of the function. This pointed that even if additional detected shapes can be considered as derivations of the two classical groups of typical or atypical curves, this practice could compromise the variability among lactation curves inside a herd, therefore further studies are needed.

Keywords : Cows; Lactation curves; Mathematical models.

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