Modeling of individual lactation curves for milk production in a population of Alpine goats in Cuba

摘要

The aim of this study was to model individual lactation curves for milk production in Alpine goats by comparing four models based on their fit to typical or atypical lactation curves. Three thousand five hundred and eighty-one test-day records were analyzed for 535 first lactations of Alpine goats controlled monthly between 1994 and 2008 in the Genetics Enterprise "Los Naranjos", in the province of La Havana, Cuba. The mathematical models used to describe the lactation curve were: Wood, Wilmink, Ali-Schaeffer and Legendre's orthogonal polynomials. Parameters were estimated utilizing nonlinear regression and iterative procedures. The criterion used to verify the goodness of fit was the adjusted coefficient of determination (R_ADJ2). Goodness of fit based on R_ADJ2