Prediction of first lactation 305-day milk yield based on bimonthly test day milk yield records in murrah buffaloes

The present study was conducted on 2100 first lactation bimonthly test day milk yield (BTDY) records of 350 Murrah buffaloes calved in between 1993 and 2017 at ICAR-NDRI, Karnal. A total of 6 BTDY records were taken from each animal at an interval of 60 days, from 6^th day to 305^th day of lactation. The prediction of First Lactation 305-Day Milk Yield (FL305DMY) was done by utilizing five conventional and machine learning methods viz., Centering Date Method (CDM), Test Interval Method (TIM), Ratio Method (RM), Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). Error in prediction was estimated by absolute error, percentage absolute error, average error, percentage average error, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and percentage RMSE. MLR was found to be the best method with the least error in prediction (5.71% RMSE), followed by ANN (5.77% RMSE). The accuracy (R²) of MLR equation including all 6 BTDY records was 91.86%. The best MLR equation for an early prediction of FL305DMY included 3 BTDY records viz., BTDY-2 (65^th day), BTDY-3 (125^th day) and BTDY-4 (185^th day) with 85.29% R². The study compared the conventional and computational methods for prediction of first lactation milk yield which could be used for early selection of the animals.