Summary The contribution that the computer has made in the interpretation and analysis of a metabolic profile test, which is designed to monitor the metabolic health of a dairy herd and assess the adequacy of dietary intake for production, is described. The test is based on an assessment of blood chemistry for any number of variates, which constitute the metabolic profile, measured for randomly selected cows from 3 groups of a herd: dry cows, cows giving intermediate quantities of milk and cows giving high daily yields. The computer program is designed to give an objective and comprehensive assessment of the test in an easily interpretable form based on a pictorial form of print-out. The profile is displayed as a ‘histogram’ presented as standard deviations from the normal base-line, and for each variable a scatter diagram is included presenting the individual variates plotted against the particular animal's daily milk yield.
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Rowlands et al. (1971) studied this question.