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Mob-based cattle weight gain forecasting using ML models

delete2025-09-08
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OA
AI
M
Muhammad Riaz Hasib Hossain *
R
Rafiqul Islam
S
Shawn McGrath
M
Md Zahidul Islam
D
David Lamb
DOI:10.1016/j.atech.2025.101428delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Forecasting mob-based cattle weight gain (MB-CWG) may benefit large livestock farms, allowing farmers to refine their feeding strategies, make educated breeding choices, and reduce risks linked to climate variability and market fluctuations. In this paper, a novel technique termed MB-CWG is proposed to forecast the one-month advanced weight gain of herd-based cattle using historical data collected from the Charles Sturt University Farm.1 This research employs a Random Forest (RF) model, comparing its performance against Support Vector Regression (SVR) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) models for monthly weight gain prediction. Four datasets were used to evaluate the model’s performance, using 756 sample data from 108 herd-based cattle, along with weather data (rainfall and temperature) influencing CWG. The RF model performs better than the SVR and LSTM models across all datasets, achieving an R² of 0.973, RMSE of 0.040, and MAE of 0.033 when both weather and age factors were included. The results indicate that including both weather and age factors significantly improves the accuracy of weight gain predictions, with the RF model outperforming the SVR and LSTM models in all scenarios. These findings demonstrate the potential of RF as a robust tool for forecasting cattle weight gain in variable conditions, highlighting the influence of age and climatic factors on herd-based weight trends. This study has also developed an innovative automated pre-processing tool to generate a benchmark dataset for MB-CWG predictive models. The tool is publicly available on GitHub2 and can assist in preparing datasets for current and future analytical research.
Keywords:
Mob-based cattle
Cattle weight gain
Cattle farming
Machine learning
Deep learning
Random forest
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Journal

Smart Agricultural Technology cover
Smart Agricultural Technology
IF:
5.7
Papers:
2.4K
Citations:
2.5K

Organization

C
Charles Sturt University
Scholars:
3.5K
Papers: 3.4K
Citations: 4.0K
U
University of New England
Scholars:
3.1K
Papers: 3.0K
Citations: 3.7K