Calving season is time of highest nutritional need in cattle
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The Prairie Star
“You want to realize that a cow’s nutritional requirements go up dramatically after she
calves,” said Janice Bowman. She is a professor of animal nutrition at Montana State
University in Bozeman.
Bowman noted that a cow’s highest nutritional requirements during her entire production
cycle take place immediately after she calves and during lactation. “Early lactation,
especially, has the highest nutritional requirements,” she said. For that reason, Bowman
said producers should plan for and prepare to meet that increased demand.
Bowman said producers can start right now to improve their herd’s nutritional health with
one simple step without a lot of cost. Bowman said cattle don’t typically need grain after
they have calved unless they are really thin and the producer can’t get enough energy into
them another way. For most producers boosting the nutritional health of their herd after
calving simply means feeding them the best quality hay that they have in the yard.
“They can just hold onto their better quality hay until calving season arrives,” she said,
and use it only to feed the new lactating cows. “If you have worked to get them into good
condition before calving season, you can feed them the lower quality hay in the fall and
winter, right up until they calve and then—when their requirements go up—feed them
your best quality hay,” said Bowman.
Bowman said the best time to plan and prepare for the increased nutritional requirements
of calving is before calving season begins. “Producers should used body conditional
scoring to address their nutritional program. It’s a subjective method of evaluating the fat
reserves a cow has by looking at various locations on her anatomy.”
Bowman said producers should be looking to see if a cow’s ribs are showing, if there is
fat in the brisket area, if the hip and pelvic bones are sharp and can be obviously seen.
“Also look at her backbone to see if the top of her spine is sticking up or if the back is
flatter, indicating there is more fat covering the bones.”
The body conditional scoring is a free, fast and simple method producers should use on a
regular basis—every time they look at their cattle they should be appraising them.
“Even if they just do it on a casual basis, we recommend that they use it; but if they can
only take the time to do it ones, do it at weaning,” she suggested.
She said weaning is a good time for careful body conditional scoring. “You have all the
cattle gathered up and in one place and you’re sorting off the calves to sell, so it’s no
additional work. You can just look at them and see what kind of body condition they are
in and decide if they need additional nutrition as indicated by not having fat reserves,”
she said.
Another reason it’s a good time at weaning is because that’s when the cow’s nutritional
requirements are the least. “If they are thin it is easy at that time to add weight. It is less
expensive and takes less feed,” said Bowman.
“If you do body conditional scoring at weaning and make some changes in the diet so
they are in good condition by the time the calves arrive the following year, you are les
likely to have problems.”
Another reason is that cattle in good body condition are able to handle the storms and
cold weather of calving season. ‘If they are in good body condition they can draw on
those fat stores and there is less of a negative impact when the cold weather and storms
come,” she said. “If they are thing Yet, Bowman noted that any time is a good time to
manage the nutritional needs of the cow. “If they are thin when they calve they have
more difficulty producing milk and are more susceptible to energy deficiency from the
cold and storms.”
Though it is best to get cattle into shape before they calve, Bowman said any time is a
good time to boost the nutritional health of a herd and it can be done with just a little
extra planning.
END
Janice Bowman <jbowman@montana.edu>