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Cow Culling Decisions Adapted for Management with CART
Author(s) -
Tronstad Russell,
Gum Russell
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.2307/1243625
Subject(s) - culling , cart , ice calving , computer science , mathematics , zoology , biology , geography , herd , pregnancy , genetics , archaeology , lactation
Abstract A stochastic dynamic programming (DP) model of range cow culling decisions incorporating market price uncertainties and dynamics of biological productivity was solved for biannual and annual calving systems. Decision trees were generated from the DP solutions using the Classification and Regression Trees (CART) methodology. The decision trees captured over 99% of the optimal DP returns from both biannual and spring‐only calving. CART culling criteria in conjunction with dual‐season calving increased wealth by 7% compared to optimal DP culling decisions with spring‐only calving, and by 10% compared to a more traditional strategy of culling all open cows.