Test-day and other milk recording options for prediction of lactation milk yield in Jaffarabadi (Bubalus bubalis) buffaloes

Abstract

Generally, standard lactation milk yield is predicted based on test-day records collected at monthly intervals. Test-day milk production at different time intervals other than monthly intervals can be used to predict lactation milk yield of field bovines in field conditions. With the same possibility, this study was carried out to predict lactation milk yield in Jaffarabadi buffaloes from various test-day milk yield data retrieved for different time intervals. A total of 1,15,339 daily milk yield records in 176 lactations of 1^st to 6^th parity of 30 Jaffarabadi buffaloes lactating at the Cattle Breeding Farm, Kamdhenu University, Junagadh, Gujarat over a period of 28 years (1991 to 2018) were used for the study. Single monthly test-day milk yield recorded on 125^th, 155^th or 185^th day i.e., 5^th, 6^th and 7^th monthly test day yield alone provided only 50% reliability in determining the standard lactation milk yield. Daily peak yield alone was also found to be a poor predictor for lactation yield. Prediction equations using combination of consecutive two monthly test day yields from 4^th to 10^th monthly test day were found reliable source for prediction of lactation milk yield providing accuracy up to 82.19% whereas, daily peak yield in combination with single monthly test day yield at mid and late lactation was also predicted lactation milk yield with accuracies up to 72.23%. Milk production recorded at weekly interval could also be used to approximate milk production using the equation 15.35+6.91 × Sum of all weekly test-day yields, with precision of 98.93% or milk production recorded at fortnightly interval by the equation 18.04+14.65 × Sum of fortnightly test-day yields, with precision of 97.14%.