Implementation of an application for daily individual concentrate feeding in commercial software for use on dairy farms
| Autor: | Bleumer, E.J.B., Andre, G., van Duinkerken, G. |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2009 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Precision Livestock Farming '09, 6-8 July, Wageningen, The Netherlands. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers Precision Livestock Farming '09, 6-8 July, Wageningen, The Netherlands |
| Popis: | Daily concentrate allowances for individual dairy cows are usually based on empiric models. These models are generally based on regression equations derived from population data and do not take into account individual and temporal variation. An application was implemented in common practice which consists of an adaptive model for estimating the actual individual response in milk yield on concentrate intake using individual real time process data. Before the application was implemented, a prototype was developed by a team consisting of biometricians, animal nutritionists and ICT application specialists. It was tested in an animal experiment and further developed into a proof of principal, which was implemented for testing in a common practical setting on a research farm. Because the results were very promising, a workshop was organised to introduce the concept to software, hardware and feed industries where they were challenged to participate. In the next collaborative phase with industry involvement the further implementation into a management system was stepwise: 1) technical documentation of algorithms, 2) programming, 3) verification of algorithms, 4) on-farm implementation of the integrated software and, 5) on-farm evaluation. During the implementation it became clear that steps 1 to 3 were not difficult to perform and did not take much time. Steps 4 and 5 were more complicated because: 1) correct data must be generated from the management system as an input for the model and, 2) the output of the model has to be interpreted correctly for calculating concentrate allowances in the management system. However, not only technical aspects of an implementation process are important, also the communication with end users and stakeholders requires particular attention, for successful implementation of a new concept. While testing and implementing the application it became clear that end users and stake holders were willing to accept and use the innovative concept but interpreted the outcome based on traditional population knowledge and paradigms |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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