Can methods of machine learning be used to betterpredict lactation curves for bovines?

Sammanfattning: A random forest is compared to an OLS model for predicting lactation curves for cows.Both of the methods have been estimated and tested using data from the period 2015-01 to2015-09. Random forests outperform OLS in testing for modeling lactation curves with adecrease in MSE by approximately 26%. Data is provided by Sveriges Lantrbruksuniversitetand includes 75 558 milking events from 320 cows. The date of the milking, the time ofday when the milking occurred as well as which cow was milked were found to be importantvariables for accurate predictions.