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Autumn and winter management is all about cow condition:
- Cow condition cannot be made up after calving
- Dry-off cows in time and have enough high quality supplement on hand to get cows to target condition (BCS 5.0 mature cows, 5.5 heifers)
- Ensure that cows are adequately fed to so they don’t lose weight in the month before calving.
Autumn pasture is not as efficient as high quality supplements (grain, PKE, maize and pasture silage) and therefore cows take longer to put weight on pasture only diets than pasture plus supplements (supplements fed to met requirements above maintenance) as shown by the table below.
Dry-off time to get to BCS 5.0 or 5.5 based on body condition score and time to calving
| Cow BCS | Rising 3 year old BCS |
Days from calving1 |
Days from calving1 (Pasture + supplements fed above maintenance) |
| 3.0 |
3.5 |
160 | 120 |
| 3.5 | 4.0 | 130 | 100 |
| 4.0 |
5.0 | 100 | 80 |
| 5.0 | 5.5 | Calving | Calving |
Note1: Includes 30 days when cows do not gain weight before calving.
Feed requirements (kg DM per day) - Autumn pasture only
Maintenance, pregnancy & gaining 1 CS in 60 days; No CS gain in last month of pregnancy,11.0 MJ ME/kg DM autumn pasture
| Breed |
Kg Lwt |
12 weeks pre-calving |
8 weeks pre-calving | 4 weeks pre-calving |
2 weeks pre-calving |
| J |
350 |
7.8 |
8.5 | 9.7 | 7.7 |
| J |
400 |
8.8 |
9.5 | 10.8 | 8.5 |
| JXF |
450 |
9.7 |
10.5 | 12.0 | 9.3 |
| Fr |
500 |
10.7 |
11.5 | 13.1 | 10.1 |
| Fr |
550 |
11.6 |
12.5 | 14.2 | 10.8 |
