Jdunn55
Member
- Location
- Helston, cornwall
With my new vets as part of a package I have monthly body condition scoring + mobility scoring done by a vet tech. I had the first visit last week and am just trying to work out what to do with the data.
Mobility scoring is easy, anything 3 pick up asap in one big session, score 2 is easy again as I'll just do one per day after milking until the list is done. Whilst there is far too many 2's and 3's for my liking, what is very nice to see is the cows I have trimmed and treated are now down in the 0/1 category which means I must have done something right for once!
BCS is a bit more tricky. The herd is probably averaging 2-2.25 which is too low. There's been lots going on and unfortunately I had very little help last year from the people who were meant to be assisting with nutrition, I won't go into detail because it's not really relevant but will say I have moved to a new team who are a lot more helpful.
Basically the spring calvers who were in calf I cut cake right back last year thinking that was the right thing to do, in-hindsight I should have carried on feeding them more than I did as they have ended up calving in thin resulting in poor milk production, I am also aware that it will now be an uphill battle to get them back in calf. I'm less worried about these as I have time to get them sorted.
The one's I am worried about and could do with some advice on are the in-calf cows. Most are ok BCS wise (3+) but there's a few who are under 2.5 and i would like them be dried off at ideally 3.5. There's 1 scanned at a BCS of 1 and is in-calf (only 10 weeks so still have time to sort her atm but has been milking very, very well). I guess my question is how much cake do I feed the underweight cows to put flesh onto them so they calve in well?
These cows would be due between September and December. There's 1 x 1, 3 x 1.5, 7 x 2 and the rest are over 3 so I'm happy with them. I aim for 12 litres from forage (to give 3600 over a lactation), and then 0.5kg of cake over that per litre. so a 20litre cow would be having 4kg concentrate. But if she's say a 1.5BCS and giving 20 litres, how much cake would you feed? 6kg? Thanks
Mobility scoring is easy, anything 3 pick up asap in one big session, score 2 is easy again as I'll just do one per day after milking until the list is done. Whilst there is far too many 2's and 3's for my liking, what is very nice to see is the cows I have trimmed and treated are now down in the 0/1 category which means I must have done something right for once!
BCS is a bit more tricky. The herd is probably averaging 2-2.25 which is too low. There's been lots going on and unfortunately I had very little help last year from the people who were meant to be assisting with nutrition, I won't go into detail because it's not really relevant but will say I have moved to a new team who are a lot more helpful.
Basically the spring calvers who were in calf I cut cake right back last year thinking that was the right thing to do, in-hindsight I should have carried on feeding them more than I did as they have ended up calving in thin resulting in poor milk production, I am also aware that it will now be an uphill battle to get them back in calf. I'm less worried about these as I have time to get them sorted.
The one's I am worried about and could do with some advice on are the in-calf cows. Most are ok BCS wise (3+) but there's a few who are under 2.5 and i would like them be dried off at ideally 3.5. There's 1 scanned at a BCS of 1 and is in-calf (only 10 weeks so still have time to sort her atm but has been milking very, very well). I guess my question is how much cake do I feed the underweight cows to put flesh onto them so they calve in well?
These cows would be due between September and December. There's 1 x 1, 3 x 1.5, 7 x 2 and the rest are over 3 so I'm happy with them. I aim for 12 litres from forage (to give 3600 over a lactation), and then 0.5kg of cake over that per litre. so a 20litre cow would be having 4kg concentrate. But if she's say a 1.5BCS and giving 20 litres, how much cake would you feed? 6kg? Thanks