Summer has kicked in, and the grass has dropped in quality, so more farmers are relying on a supplement – whether they’re shed, crops, feed pad, or paddock feeding.
Other popular options for when available pasture is running short is changing the milking frequency – 16 hours, once-a-day (OAD) etc. The aim is to maintain production for longer as spring calving herds are heading into drying off. Some cows will be better able to cope with changes and it’ll be reflected in body condition score (BCS) alongside production.
Hitting cow body condition scoring (BCS) at calving is crucial to set her up for production in the next season. So, we need to make sure that we don’t lose condition prior to drying off, with a focus on maintaining milk production.
To plan ahead for drying off, the nutrition, and milking frequency leading up to it, we need to know where we’re at with a cow body condition. As each cow responds differently, an individual cow basis is used with the following considerations:
- Expected calving date (confirmed by pregnancy test).
- Age (first calvers must be back to BCS 5.5 for their second calving, which means they must be in better BCS now as they take longer to gain BCS at this time of the year because they’re still growing).
- Current BCS.
- Milk production and milking frequency.
- Type and quantity of supplements (and total feed) available for her (specifically related to how the feed partitions to BCS gain).
Therefore, the best investment to make now is to individually condition score your herd and use the information to make individual decisions for your cows.
For example, a heifer with a BCS 3.5 in early February, that is due to calve on 10 July and is expected to gain BCS when dry on a predominantly grass diet needs to be dried off before the end of the same month to hit her target of BCS 5.5 for next calving(!).
We know (from working with herds) that the second calvers often have the poorest 6-week in-calf rates. We also know from feedback received from clients (and their MINDA data) that second calvers have come into the shed after calving full of milk when they’ve been dried off timely and have hit their BCS calving target.
So, getting young animals back to BCS 5.5 is crucial for their lifetime productivity. The same can be said for older animals too. An analysis in herds with regular individual BCS has shown that cows not hitting calving targets, as well as cows losing more than 1 BCS after calving, have a significant reduction with in-calf rates compared to their herd mates.
But if you aren’t ready for us to set drying off dates based on individual cow BCS, then we can use the data to make a list of cows to be put on OAD, be drafted into the “light mob”, or receive increased supplementary feed during lactation.
A lot of our farmers will now get us to individually BCS their herds to create a cow-specific list. As they love the ease of the job (we can complete it during milking in most cow sheds – but there are a lot of different options for where we can do individual cow scores), the turn-around speed in the data (uploaded live directly into MINDA), and the report simplicity (e.g., a list of cows to be dried off in weekly batches, or based on how you’d want it). We can also combine the report with the herd test data to simplify the dry cow decisions, and the list will let you know the cows needing to be dried off, along with when and where.
Mark Sing, Bridgnorth Farms shares:
“Getting the herd individually BCS’d in summer is a great way of getting an unbiased BCS, combining this with the pregnancy testing data enables us to structure dry off to set the cows up for next season. It’s a great system that takes the guess work out of drying off and it means I can maximise days in milk, knowing that I can still achieve target BCS at calving”.
In short, we can help you achieve an improvement in BCS for your herd by:
- Individually scoring your herd (we’re BCS accredited vets, and it can be completed during milking).
- Helping you set cow-level BCS targets – during lactation and dry off.
- Helping to provide practical solutions to achieve these targets.
- Vets that can help you with feed budgets, return on investment, and nutritional advice around achieving these BCS targets.
Don’t leave individual BCS until it’s too late to make changes; the best time to get the cows scored individually is late February / early March. You can always reach out to your local Anexa clinic for more information too.
