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Journal of Dairy Science Vol. 84 No. 3 730-739
© 2001 by American Dairy Science Association ®
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A Case-Acquisition and Decision-Support System for the Analysis of Group-Average Lactation Curves

D. Pietersma 1, R. Lacroix 1, E. Block 1, K. M. Wade 1, and D. Lefebvre 2

1 Department of Animal Science, McGill University, Macdonald Campus, 21111 Lakeshore Road, Ste. Anne de Bellevue, QC Canada H9X 3V9
2 Department of R&D, Programme d'analyse des troupeaux laitiers du Québec, 555 boul. des Anciens Combattants, Ste. Anne de Bellevue, QC, Canada H9X 3R4

A case-acquisition and decision-support system was developed to support the analysis of group-average lactation curves and to acquire example cases from domain specialists. This software was developed through several iterations of a three-step approach involving 1) problem analysis and formulation in consultation with two dairy nutrition specialists; 2) development of a case-acquisition and decision-support prototype by the system developer; and 3) use of the prototype by the domain specialists to analyze and classify milk-recording data from example herds. The overall problem was decomposed into three subproblems: removal of outlier tests and lactation curves of individual cows; interpretation of group-average lactation curves; and diagnosis of detected abnormalities at the herd level through the identification of potential management deficiencies. For each subproblem, a software module was developed allowing the user to analyze both graphical and numerical performance representations and classify these representations using predefined linguistic descriptors. The example-based method for the development of the program proved to be very useful, facilitating the communication between system developer and domain specialists, and allowing the specialists to explore the appropriateness of the various prototypes developed. The resulting software represents a formalization of the approach to group-average lactation curve analysis, elicited from the two domain specialists. In future research, the case-acquisition and decision-support system will be complemented with knowledge to automate identified classification tasks, which will be captured through the application of machine-learning techniques to example cases, acquired from domain specialists using the softwares.

Key Words: dairy cattle • lactation curve • decision-support system • machine learning

Submitted on May 8, 2000
Accepted on October 24, 2000




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[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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