As cows are progressing further into the lactation, closer to drying-off and closer to the housing period, body condition scoring (BCS) should be done now.
Carrying out a BCS assessment sooner rather than later will allow farmers to rectify any cows that are under/over condition before they calve down.
Typically, the focus at this time of year is making sure that cows don’t lose condition and maintain production at the same time.
When grazing on low dry matter (DM) grass, with normal to good milk yields, cows can quickly lose condition when the weather is poor.
Hopefully, the DM in grass continues to hold for a few more weeks in order to keep milk solid production high at this time of the year, while cows hold condition and farmers continue to build covers and extend the grazing season.
BCS
The key to managing cow condition is to start early, as you don’t want to restrict the cow in the immediate run in to calving, as they will have reduced intake anyways.
If you pose further restriction on an already reduced intake cow, it is likely to trigger some metabolic issues around calving.
If you dry off the cows at the standard 60-70 days prior to calving with cows at a BCS of 2.75, while eating reasonable quality silage of 68-70 DM digestibility (DMD), will give you an optimal BCS of 3-3.25 at calving.
For cows that are identified as too thin now, they should be flagged for an earlier dry-off this year and even consider putting them once-a-day (OAD) milking prior to early dry-off.
The well conditioned cows should not be given more dry-off time time than the standard, as otherwise they will only put on more weight.
High quality silage will have to be restricted to these animals, or it can be diluted by adding straw as part of the feed offered.
However, for now, the BCS assessment should be used to try and get all cows uniform before drying-off by supplementing more meal or silage or OAD milking the thin cows and restricting the well conditioned cows in the parlour, meal-wise.
A number of different practices should be done now in order to rectify the situation, as follows:
- Assess quality and quantity of feed available;
- Identify the calving date and current BCS for each cow;
- Batch cows according to BCS over the winter period and manage to minimise excessive BCS gain over the dry period.
Batching cows now might seem excessive, but it is something to consider in a couple weeks time, as right now you want the cows to get the most out of the grass available to them.
The DM of grass over the past week has been averaging around 17-18%, which means that there is still quality grass available to cows to help build condition and produce milk.
