D2O-Lancaster Farming Saturday, December 15,1990
Body Condition Scoring, An Important Dairy Farm Tool
(Continued from Page Dl5)
pregnant and then we have the
client body score the cows at
approximately 200 days of lacta
tion in order to assess whether or
not the cows need to gain more
weight during their last third of
lactation. They body score them at
the time of drying off in order to
ensure that they have gained the
necessary weight that they will
need for the next lactation. Also,
the body condition score at the
time of drying off becomes very
important because when we body
score them the day they calve, we
can get an assessment of whether
they have lost or gained weight
during the dry period. We are not
necessarily trying to get cows to
gain a lot of weight during the dry
period but it is extremely critical
to have these cows not lose weight
during the dry period. Again, there
is research that shows cows that
lose weight during the dry period
don’t peak as well as they should
and they also have reproductive
problems. These same cows if
they lose weight during the dry
period have an accelerated weight
loss in the first month after calv
ing. There has been a published
report out of Cornell University
showing that cows that loose body
score of 1.5 or greater during the
first month after calving have a
conception rate of 17% or less on
first service. Normal conception
rate in the Northeast and in Cana
da should run around 55-60%.
Thus, you can see that there is a
dramatic difference between the
normal conception rate and the
conception rate for those cows
who lose extreme amounts of
body weight after calving. Thus,
we have to monitor the cows’
nutrition program during the
whole year not just during the first
month or two after she calves. It
becomes extremely important to
monitor these cows during the last
100 days of their lactation in order
to have them gain the necessary
weight for the next lactation and
then have a specific dry cow prog
ram so they do not lose that weight
during the last part of the dry
period.
If we try to feed dry cows
according to the National
Research Council’s recommenda
tions, they are prone to lose
weight during the last three weeks
before calving because these
recommendations don’t seem to
take into account the demands that
the growing fetus makes on the
mother and thus, they have a ten
dency to lose weight. I will try to
come back to this in another arti-
cle and we will talk about dry cow
management and some of our
thoughts on feeding dry cows.
Now that we know when to
body score, what kind of scores
are we looking for during different
stages of lactation? We like cows
to go dry and to calve with a body
score of about 3.5-4.0. During the
first month, the body score will
drop about 0.5-0.75, In other
words, for a cow that calves at 4.0,
we would like to have her down to
3.25 by the end of the first month
and then by the time she reaches
peak at about 70 days, she will
have fallen down to about 2.7-3.0.
This is a nice controlled body
weight loss. Thus, we should be
breeding cows with a condition
score of 2.70-3.0 and then starting
at about 150-180 days after calv
ing, they should be back up to 3.2
and then, by the time they go dry,
they should be back up to 3.5-4.0
We are now talking about groups
of cows and there are some cows
out there, just like people, that you
can not fatten. These cows are
what we call “super cows”
because they seem to be able to
maintain a thin body condition
and still perform a normal lacta
tion and breed back normally.
These cows, if you measure feed
intake, have tremendous appetites
and far out eat what we consider
the normal cow as far as roughage
consumption is concerned.
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SHARTLESVILLE
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RD 1, Box 1342
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Jonestown
BLUE MOUNTAIN
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Rt. 72 South
717-865-2994
East Earl
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In the past, people have said
that we should weigh and measure
heifers and put them on a growth
chart and I highly recommend
this. There are some people now
who measure the heights of heif
ers and body condition score them
instead of weighing them. I feel
his is a quicker and more accurate
way of assessing a heifer program.
We do not like to have young heif
ers with a greater than 3.0 body
score but rather prefer to keep
them around 2.7. There have been
several reports that show that
young heifers that are too fat at the
time they reach puberty, lay down
excess fat in the udder and these
replace the epithaelial that pro
duce milk. These animals give
approximately 27% less milk than
they would have if they had not
been over fed in energy. This
explains why some of our heifers
raised on com silage have gotten
too fat and have never really per
formed as well as they should
have. Once a heifer is pregnant,
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then we try to increase her body
score up to 3.2% at the time of
calving but not any heavier than
that. I have stated that she needs
this energy reserve in order to
reach peak production but when
we look at the lactation curves,
heifers don’t peak as high as cows
so they don’t have this tremend
ous need for an energy reserve the
same as older cows. Also, heifers,
because they have not calved
before, have a narrower pelvic
canal and if we get them too fat,
one of the places that they will
store this fat is in the pelvic canal
and will give us more problems at
the time of calving. So remember,
growing heifers a condition
score of 2.7-3.0 and then have
them up to about 3.0-3.2 at calving
and if we treat springing heifers
like older cows and put them on a
dry cow ration 6-8 weeks before
calving, they seem to come on
feed better and they still follow a
normal lactation curve.
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742 Nottingham Rd
Ronks
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370 Newport Raid
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McCoole. MD
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SorrwrMt, PA 814-443-1691
McCoole, MD 301-786-6800
Watsontown
BEILER’S REPAIR
1 M. W. of Turbolvlllt
On Rt 44
RD 2, Box 54
West Chester
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215-696-2980
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ROt
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