Owl Farm

Farmwatch

Region: Waikato

Many farms will achieve BCS target for a majority of their herd, but not for every cow. It’s likely the lower BCS ones are the same cows that will hold back the herds’ reproductive performance later in the year. Tweaks to how cows at either end of the BCS spectrum are fed could be important.

Now is a good time to get a BCS profile of the herd and determine what cows are lagging behind. Scott farm’s herd has 14% at less than CS 4.5; 30% of cows (incl R2 heifers) are at target BCS 5 (or 5.5 for heifers) and don’t need feeding for weight gain. The rest are between 4.5 and 5. Knowing this creates opportunities to save excessive feed going into cows already with adequate condition. Complicating the herd split is also calving date. With later calving thin cows more likely to have time to gain BCS, and only being a small part of the herd, it’s an option to separate them out for preferential feeding. Form a herd of cows and heifers already at target and put them on maintenance feed, continuing to feed the rest for BCS gain. Feeding levels for pregnant cows can be found in the Facts and Figures book page 53.

www.dairynz.co.nz/media/5789569/facts_and_figures_web_220617.pdf