Detection of Dairy Herd Management Issues Using Fatty Acid Profiles Predicted by Mid-Infrared Spectrometry

• Published in: Animals (Basel) Vol. 15; no. 11; p. 1575
• Main Authors: Franceschini, Sébastien, Fastré, Claire, Nickmilder, Charles, Santschi, Débora E., Warner, Daniel, Bahadi, Mazen, Bertozzi, Carlo, Veselko, Didier, Dehareng, Frédéric, Gengler, Nicolas, Soyeurt, Hélène
• Format: Journal Article Web Resource
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 28.05.2025; MDPI
• Subjects: Analysis; Animal production & animal husbandry; Animal welfare; Body fat; Breastfeeding & lactation; cow; Dairy cattle; dairy cows; Dairy industry; Decision-making; detection; disease; fatty acid; Fatty acids; Fermentation; Fourier transforms; FT-MIR spectrometry; herd management; Humidity; infrared; Infrared spectroscopy; Life sciences; Machine learning; Metabolism; Milk; Milk production; Nutrition; Productions animales & zootechnie; Proteins; Sciences du vivant; Scientific imaging; unsupervised hierarchical clustering; Belgium; Canada; Quebec; dairy cows; herd management; fatty acids; unsupervised hierarchical clustering; FT-MIR spectrometry
• ISSN: 2076-2615; 0030-6835; 2076-2615
• DOI: 10.3390/ani15111575

This article focuses on the creation of a monitoring tool using routinely collected data from milk payment analyses. Milk samples were analyzed through Fourier Transform mid-infrared spectrometry every 1 to 3 days, and their compositions were predicted using machine learning models. Among the predicted parameters, fatty acid profiles appear to be effective indicators of animal status and management practices. In this research, these profiles were summarized using 31 fatty acids or groups of fatty acids. The methodology consists of four steps: hierarchical clustering to detect patterns in a Belgian spectral dataset (N = 774,781), interpretation of the identified seven clusters, development of predictive models applied to a Canadian dataset (N = 670,165), and validation using management information collected from Canadian farms. The identified clusters revealed significant relationships with feeding management strategies and temporal evolutions, highlighting the potential to develop automated alert systems that assist farmers and advisors in herd monitoring.