Comparison of nonlinear models for predicting the lactation curve and milk quality in

dairy goats
Samir Julin Calvo Cardona* 1, Jun David Corrales lvarez2, Jos Lindenberg Rocha
Sarmento3, Henry Cardona Cadavid1
1
Grupo de investigacin en gentica, mejoramiento y modelacin animal GaMMA, Facultad
de Ciencias Agrarias e Instituto de Biologa, Universidad de Antioquia, Medelln, Colombia.
2
Departamento de produccin animal, Facultad de Agronomia, Universidad de Buenos Aires,
Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires 1417, Argentina
3
Departamento de Zootecnia-UFPI
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Cra 75 # 65-87, Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias,
Universidad de Antioquia, Medelln, Colombia;
*
samirjulian@gmail.com
Lactation curves of milk yield and composition using nonlinear-models aims to provide a
concise summary of the patterns of production and valuable information about the biological
and economic efficiency of each animal. In this context, it is important to know the
productive behavior and milk quality, measured as the solids content during lactation, in
goats. In this study a total of 4,160 fortnightly test-day milk, fat, protein and totals solids
records were used. The information was collected from 284 Colombian dairy goats belonging
to eigth herds. The requirements for a lactation record to be included in this study were 1) an
interval of 210 days for the lactation period and 2) at least 3 test-day records by animal.
Twenty models were tested and compared using the Akaike information criterion (AIC), the
Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and the mean square error of prediction (MSEP). All
analyses were carried out using the nls2 package in R-project. The results showed that the
best model for milk production was the one described by Nelder (1966). Instead, for the
curves of fat, protein and total solids the model of Cappio-Borlino (1995) was selected. For
each trait, the time to peak production was estimated using the first derivatives. The average
time at peak production was day 7 and the milk yield at that day was 1.93Kg. Additionally,
the average production of fat, protein and total solids in milk at the average peak day were
0.108Kg (day 12), 0.09Kg (day 13) and 0.345 Kg (day 13), respectively. Goat milk is of great
importance in cheese production and knowing the pattern of the solids in milk during lactation
would optimize production and other milk derivatives. This study suggests that to model the
lactation curve in dairy goats for milk production, fat, protein and total solids the models
described by Nelder (1995) and Cappio-Borlino (1995) are recommended; these models allow
to estimate important parameters in order to improve production and economic efficiency of
dairy goats.
Keywords: test day, milk production, Lactation curves.
Acknowledgments:
Funding for this research was provided by the Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia,
Tecnologa e Innovacin (COLCIENCIAS) and Universidad de Antioquia (CODI
Sostenibilidad 2013 Cdigo E01727). Also, the goat producers and undergraduate students
(Universidad de Antioquia) for providing and recollecting the data, respectively.