Manage body condition score for better fertility and calving
With spring calving fast approaching, suckler farmers have been reminded of the importance of ensuring their cows are in the optimum body condition score ahead of calving.
With spring calving fast approaching, suckler farmers have been reminded of the importance of ensuring their cows are in the optimum body condition score ahead of calving.
For spring calving herds, Aisling Molloy explained as part of the Future Beef ‘A Farmer’s Guide to Pre-Calving’ webinar held on January 21, the target body condition score at calving is 2.75-3.05. To measure this, a physical assessment of the level of fatness or condition present on the cow’s tail head, ribs and short ribs is required.
Professor David Kenny, Head of the Animal and Bioscience Department at Teagasc, also featured on the webinar and he delved into the Teagasc repository of research on body condition scoring, highlighting its importance in optimising herd fertility and limiting difficult calvings.
“Body condition score, from a farmer’s perspective, is one of the key management tools that they can use to have a major influence not alone on the calving process but on the subsequent fertility of the herd,” he explained.
Body condition score at calving, he added, has probably the single greatest influence on the subsequent fertility of the herd, which has consequences for achieving a 365-day calving interval.
“Cows that are particularly thin at calving can take up to a month longer to come back into normal heat cycles again after calving.”
Optimising cow body condition score
The process of optimising body condition score at calving really commences at weaning, he explained, at which point heifers or older, thin cows should be identified and weaned earlier or grouped at housing to allow for preferential treatment over the winter months.
“One condition score is the equivalent of 70kg of liveweight,” he explained, “and it takes a considerable amount of time, even if the cow is gaining 0.5kg/day, to accumulate that extra fat.”
“For cows that are quite close to calving now, it will be difficult to change condition score to any great extent. If they are too thin, they need to be getting ad-lib, good quality silage as a minimum. These cows would benefit from additional feeding after calving and should be prioritised for early turnout to grass.
“Equally from a calving perspective, you don’t want those cows that are in good condition already to be overly fat at calving. In fact, they can often afford to lose a bit of condition, saving on silage.”
Although altering the silage feeding regime was explored for either over or under conditioned cows, Professor Kenny recommended offering cows in the optimum condition moderate quality silage (66 DMD) ahead of calving. Meal supplementation is not warranted in such circumstances unless the forages offered at low in protein (less than 12% crude protein). Where this is the case, supplementing the cows for a few weeks before calving with a good quality source of protein, such as soya bean meal, was recommended to increase the overall protein density of the diet, a factor critical in the production of quality colostrum.