Discover the MilkBot^®

MilkBot^® is a project to develop technology to quantify both magnitude and shape of lactation curves in a consistent and repeatable way. It is based on the simple observation that lactation curves vary, no doubt influenced by genetics, environment, and health, and tools for characterizing that variation are likely to be useful in understanding many problems in dairy herd management and dairy research.

There are two essential components to MilkBot^® technology.

1. The MilkBot^® Model

   This is a simple nonlinear algebraic model predicting daily milk production as a function of DIM and the four MilkBot^® parameters, scale, ramp, offset, and decay. From fitted parameter values it is easy to calculated daily production at any day in the curve, or M305, persistency, peak milk, peak day, and several other metrics.

2. The MilkBot^® Fitting Engine

   Calculating fitted parameter values from observed milk production data is complicated by the fact that MilkBot is a nonlinear model, so the methods used for the more common linear models do not work. We have developed a variety of fitting methods, including a very powerful maximum-likelihood genetic algorithm that can fit a lactation starting from as little as a single data point. We provide access to fitting software over the Internet as a service.

Website summary

Publications and presentations describing MilkBot technology are listed on the Publications page. Recent or upcoming items may be highlighted on the DairySight News page. The MilkBot model, parameters, fitting engine each get a dedicated page, and some possible uses are discussed in the Applications page.

To test MilkBot technology your own data, start from the Services page. Using MilkBot services will require you to set up a DairySight Account and Sign in.

Finally, you can use the Contact link at the bottom of each page to send us email, to which we usually respond promptly