Protocol to build reproductive and productive indicators for bio-economic models in dairy sciences

PICCARDI, M.; BÓ, G.A.; BALZARINI, M.

Florencia

Conferencia; XXVIIth International Biometric Conference; 2014

The objective of this work is to develop a protocol to set up some reproductive and productive indicators that are needed to run a bio-economic model for dairy herd comparisons. We use a Markov-chain model that simulates a dairy herd and their replacements for nine lactations under different scenarios. This model demands estimated probabilities of reproduction, abortion, culling, and mortality to simulate a proportion of cows from one state to the next. For instance, a nonpregnant cow could become pregnant, be culled, or die and a pregnant cow could abort, be culled, die, or calve at the end of gestation. The information on these events updated monthly for each cow in the herd. Furthermore, this bio-economic model uses the MilkBot model to fit lactation curves that determines the milk production depending on lactation number, months in milk, and reproductive status. The value of a dairy herd management is then calculated as the sum of Income over feed cost, culling cost, mortality cost, income from newborn, reproductive management cost. We develop a protocol to use information extracted from a herd management software, DairyComp305®.