Path Analysis of Effective Factors Affecting Milk Yield of Crossbred Dairy Cattle by Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)

Abstract

The present study was conducted to evaluate the relationships among the factors that affect milk yield in dairy cattle and was aimed to determine the direct and indirect effects of these factors on milk yield. In this study, the direct and indirect relationships between dairy cattle’s lactation order (LO), the age of animal (Age), lactation length (LL), with milk yield (MY) were determined by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) through software R using LAVAAN package. In this study, 100 milk yield records were collected from Livestock Farm of CVSc. & A.H., CAU, Aizawl, Mizoram, from year 2010 to 2019. The results showed that, the direct effect of lactation order (LO), age of the animal (Age), and lactation length (LL) on milk yield (MY) were found -0.002, -0.18, & +0.68 respectively. The indirect effect of age of the animal on milk yield through lactation order was found -0.00196 whereas through lactation length it was found +0.2108. The indirect effect of lactation order through lactation length was found -0.1564. The results showed that lactation length (LL) of the animal affects significantly (p<0.05) to the milk yield.