Prediction of Milk Fatty Acid Profile in Dairy Cows Fed Dietary Fat Differing in Fatty Acid Composition

Abstract

The objective of this work was to predict changes in milk fat composition caused by differences in dietary fat. Twenty-two references describing 35 experiments and 108 treatments were used in the analysis. For lauric, myristic, and palmitic acids in milk, proportions in the dietary fat and the total dietary fat concentration were important predictors for their concentrations in milk as well as for stearic and oleic acids in milk. Using a model that included these four parameters, the residual standard deviation around the observed versus predicted line within experiments was approximately 10% of the mean for short-chain fatty acids (