Artifical Intelligence

The dairy industry in Quebec operates with very tight profit margins, making the selection of replacement heifers a critical decision for farm management. Farmers aim to identify heifers with a long productive lifespan in order to offset the significant costs of rearing. Reproductive performance plays a central role in dairy production: cows with strong reproductive traits tend to produce more milk and ensure higher economic returns. Being able to predict reproductive performance would therefore provide farmers with an objective basis for selection.

Some members of the RQR, who are experts in AI, are active in the Plateforme IA-Agrosanté (PIAAS), which is currently developing a model to predict the productive lifespan of heifers using ancestral and herd-level data. As part of this research pipeline, they are also working on predicting reproductive performance. The project leverages production and health data from multiple dairy farms across Quebec to build and validate machine learning models.

They anticipate that the outcomes of this project will encourage further development of data-driven approaches in animal production and contribute to greater efficiency and profitability in the sector.