There's money in condition-scoring - fact or fiction?
The condition score (CS) of a cow before or after she goes onto a break of feed will be the same. Condition score measures fat under the skin as well as muscle mass, not gut fill! If you can see or feel the hollows around the tap-shaped pin bone the cow is CS 4 or below.
The tap-shaped pin bone is not influenced by
gut fill. If the knobs on the tap are prominent and
there are ‘dimples‘ between them, the CS is 4 or less.
Weighing may be more accurate than CS but you can still have a big skinny cow that weighs the same as a little fat one. CS and weight together may be the ideal measure. Condition scoring is a much easier than weighing.
Friends and people who don't want to upset you tend to give a CS of 4.5 when asked. Changes in CS can be difficult to pick up when you see cows everyday. Scoring to ½ a CS is accurate enough for most management decisions. A CS ending in any number other than 0 or 5 is most likely an average of several animals.
What's the price of getting condition-scoring wrong?
Being too generous with your scores can lead to some serious consequences. Any or all of which can happen alone or together.
- Milking on too long at the end of lactation
- Failing to feed cows to achieve a CS of 5-5.5 at calving
- Failing to reach ‘peak' production expectations
- Running out of feed, supplements and/or time
- More problems and work at calving
- More non-cyclers at the mating start
- Later calving next season
It takes 3-4 weeks of fully feeding on high-quality feed to gain one CS and is rarely achieved. Milking cows can't eat enough and dry cows don't get offered enough. Milk on only if you have feed. Cows not reaching calving target CS will not have body reserves to call upon from calving to peak. They will produce less than expected and this production loss is for the whole season.
In terms of milk production, increasing CS at calving from 3 to 4 gives an extra 17.5kgMS for the season; from 3.5 to 4.5 an extra 15kgMS; and from 4 to 5 an extra 12kgMS. Eighteen percent of cows in CS 4 at calving will not be cycling at the start of mating while less than 10% will be non-cyclers if the cows calve in CS 5.
Low CS at calving leads to more work! Thinner cows create more problems. We see more metabolic diseases, greater production losses, more deaths, more retained membranes, more calf deaths, slower returns to heat and later-calving cows which all add up to significant financial losses.
What can you do about it?
Regular measurement of CS allows close monitoring of trends through the year. Your results can be compared with Dairy NZ's optimal average herd line to see how you are going. Any individuals lagging behind can be singled out for preferential management.
By feeding your CS data into Infovet, Totally Vets can present your CS information graphically and trends can be monitored. Since Infovet is a software package that allows collaboration between milk producers, herd improvement organisations and our own veterinary software, your CS data can be used to recognise problems and measure responses to any actions that you may implement.
Identifying and recognising CS trends can be used to prompt pasture and fertiliser management, trace elements and minerals, supplement purchases and farm finances.
The monetary and lifestyle gains from changes implemented to address condition score are well worth the cost of money spent on independent monthly or strategic condition- scoring. Include condition-scoring as one of the tools for a successful mating.
