In this paper, bit error rate (BER) expressions for the λ-MRC receiver for a decode and forward (DF) cooperative system are obtained for Nakagami-m fading, where m is not an integer. Previous results were available only for integer values of m. BER analysis is done by employing approximate statistics of a gamma conditionally gaussian (CG) random variable (RV) obtained through the Loskot-Prony approximation. Numerical results obtained using the analytical BER expressions are shown to closely follow the simulation results, despite the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the gamma CGRV being a high signal to noise ratio (SNR) appoximation. © 2013 IEEE.