Disentangling the relative roles of resource acquisition and allocation on animal feed efficiency: insights from a dairy cow model

Table 1 Measures of efficiency, energy acquired, and milk energy output for model sensitivity analysis

	Growth allocation			Lactation allocation			Basal acquisition			Lactation acquisition
	L	M	H	L	M	H	L	M	H	L	M	H
FE_lac2
Value (%)	52.70	52.92	53.04	49.65	52.76	56.24	52.87	52.94	52.84	52.95	52.88	52.82
Deviation from M (%)	−0.41	0.00	0.23	−5.90	0.00	6.61	−0.13	0.00	−0.20	0.13	0.00	−0.12
E_acq_lac2
Value (10³ MJ)	54.58	54.66	54.84	54.70	54.67	54.71	51.55	54.68	57.85	52.49	54.68	56.90
Deviation from M (%)	−0.15	0.00	0.33	0.05	0.00	0.08	−5.72	0.00	5.81	−4.00	0.00	4.05
E_milk_lac2
Value (10³ MJ)	28.75	28.92	29.09	27.15	28.84	30.77	27.25	28.95	30.56	27.80	28.92	30.05
Deviation from M (%)	−0.58	0.00	0.59	−5.84	0.00	6.71	−5.85	0.00	5.59	−3.87	0.00	3.93
FE_life
Value (%)	43.97	42.71	40.55	42.53	43.27	41.43	41.86	42.51	42.85	40.38	42.62	44.23
Deviation from M (%)	2.96	0.00	−5.04	−1.72	0.00	−4.27	−1.54	0.00	0.80	−5.26	0.00	3.79
E_acq_life
Value (10³ MJ)	636.20	559.59	464.99	708.03	573.46	379.28	481.09	557.99	621.69	452.51	551.67	656.60
Deviation from M (%)	13.69	0.00	−16.91	23.47	0.00	−33.86	−13.78	0.00	11.42	−17.98	0.00	19.02
E_milk_life
Value (10³ MJ)	281.99	242.72	194.09	302.90	252.88	163.03	207.05	241.76	269.98	187.40	238.70	292.70
Deviation from M (%)	16.18	0.00	−20.03	19.78	0.00	−35.53	−14.36	0.00	11.67	−21.49	0.00	22.63

Measures are for the periods from birth to death (_life), and from parturition to drying off in second lactation (_lac2) for the three levels (L: low; M: medium and H: high) of the four genetic parameters that drive allocation to growth (G2S _GEN), allocation to lactation (Pc2S _GEN), basal acquisition (AcqB _GEN) and lactation acquisition (AcqL _GEN)
Values are in absolute terms and as percentages of the M level of the corresponding parameter
Parameters values are in Additional file 1: Table S1

ISSN: 1297-9686