Condition-scoring suckler cows for indoor feeding

With heavy rain causing cows to be housed earlier than planned on many farms, it is important that cows are grouped and fed correctly to maintain body condition this autumn.

Even where cows are still grazing, wet grass means cows are taking in less energy and run the risk of losing flesh unless they are correctly supplemented.

Condition-scoring cows is a useful way to group cows to manage their feed levels. Handle cows along the ribs, hook and pin bones and tail head to try to assess the level of fat cover.

You will have to make allowances between breeds, but with regular monitoring, you should notice the change in body condition.

Weight gain

In a suckler cow, moving from a condition score of 2.5 to 3.0 is the equivalent of gaining 30kg to 40kg of liveweight.

This can take between 40 and 50 days, so the earlier you condition-score cows and group them for feeding requirement, the better.

Autumn calving

Autumn-calving cows should be in a body condition score (BCS) of 2.5 to 3.0 before the start of the breeding season.

Thin cows (BCS 2.0 or below) will be slow to come back into heat and milk production will also suffer, reducing calf performance.

Separate thin cows for additional feeding. On good-quality silage (70+DMD), offer cows 2kg/day of a 16% ration until they reach the desired body condition.

On average-quality silage (66-68DMD), increase meal levels to 3kg/day as this will provide additional energy and protein in the diet.

Once cows reach the desired body condition, you can reduce meal levels back to 2kg/day.

Spring calving

Even though spring calving is a long way off, where cows are housed, they should be grouped and fed based on body condition.

Where cows are suckling a calf that weighs 250kg or heavier, weaning will take the pressure off cows and avoid the loss of body condition.

There is little point in feeding 2kg/day of meal to a March-calving cow to try and maintain milk production to rear a calf.

It will be far more cost-effective to feed the meal direct to the calf to drive liveweight gain instead. The cow can be put on to a maintenance diet.

Where spring-calving cows are thin, move them on to ad-lib good-quality silage of 70 DMD or better. Once cows reach BCS of 3.0, you can restrict forage thereafter.

Average-quality silage (66 DMD) will only maintain body condition in spring-calving cows. Therefore, if you have thin cows and average-quality silage, you may need to offer 1kg of barley/soya hulls for a short period to increase body condition.

As the cow is still in early pregnancy, any meal fed to increase body condition will not affect calf size as 75% of calf development occurs in the final three months of gestation. Once cows hit the desired condition, meal feeding should be stopped.

Where cows are fat, you can restrict silage to reduce body condition. Only restrict silage where you have sufficient space for all cows to feed at the same time, otherwise the dominant cows will eat to appetite and smaller cows will be under-fed.

Read more

Managing the suckler cow around weaning time

Priority management when housing cattle