Expert system for dairy cattle management

Abstract

India is basically an agriculture country and the dairy sector plays a significant role in supplementing family income and generating employment in the rural areas, particularly among the landless, small and marginal farmers and farm women, besides providing cheap and nutritious food to millions of people. In India, the total milk production is extremely poor in terms of productivity in the world due to lack of proper extension system. Even though, information on various aspects of dairy cattle management is available, they are not reaching the required area of the farm units / farmers. To address this problem, a rule based expert system for dairy cattle management was developed with user friendly menus. This system interacts with users in two ways. As a decision support tool, the user can interact with the system using some arranged rules which are collection of if / then rules, collected from experts in the veterinary field. Using these rules, a knowledge base was designed for the expert system and programming codes were writeen in VB. Net. The proposed expert system provides instant access of the required knowledge on selected parameters, viz. feeding, breeding, diseases, cattle shed management, milking, fodder cultivation and health management. This expert system is useful as an online guide to the users who are involved in animal husbandry and dairy management.