‘Machine learning’ is a type of artificial intelligence which involves computers discovering how they can perform tasks without being explicitly programmed to do so. This involves the computer developing algorithms that improve automatically through experience, similar to the way that humans learn to improve the accuracy of things they do.

The research has involved applying the approach, together with a range of other mathematical modelling techniques, to dairy cow intake data derived from recent studies undertaken at AFBI. These studies all involved early lactation high yielding dairy cows which were offered grass silage based diets, and in which intakes were measured using a feed intake monitoring system.

Initial results have demonstrated that the approach is promising, so the next step is to expand the size of the dataset being used in the analysis. To achieve this, the research team are now preparing a dataset from 40 long term dairy cow experiments which were conducted over the past 25 years.