Are you underfeeding your cows? Research has shown that there is a correlation between underfeeding cows and lameness. Underfed cows go lame and lame cows lose Body Condition because of not eating enough. I have been to many farms in my career and most farmers believe that they are fully feeding their cows. The question is, how would you know? Are you measuring that by residuals? Or is it the cow condition score? Or is it because your farm advisor believes so? All of those points could be good indicators but they can also give you a false indication. Especially troublesome is measuring by the residuals, allow me to explain.
If your cows are out of the paddock for 3 to 3 1/2 hours per milking and you milk twice a day your cows may be away from grazing for 7 hours. If they are not fed in the cow shed or on a feed pad you deny them food for nearly 1/3 of a 24-hour day. I would argue in that case, you are underfeeding your cows purely because your cows do not get the opportunity to eat as much as possible. If I am correct that would mean that cows in these circumstances would be more prone to lameness as a direct result of underfeeding.
I know that research has been done where they found that cows can have their daily intake within 4 hours. However, cows are not machines that we can turn on and off whenever it suits – it would be useful to know how long we would have to have them turned on for in a day! A cow is a living creature that farmers use to convert a low-quality product not fit for human consumption into a high-quality product that can be used. Therefore, the more low-quality food we can get into that cow the more milk we are going to get out. If we restrict the food intake the cow is not producing to her maximum so, therefore, we are underfeeding her.
I also hear it often said that milk production goes up when less cows are milked. Why would that be? What is going on? To me the obvious answer is that the remaining cows are better fed. So if you get more milk with less cows, why would you milk those extra cows? Milking takes you longer, there is more staff needed, you have more problems and stress, you get less milk and less profit. The only advantage that I can see is that you pay less tax.
So, we have two scenarios where cows are being underfed but it is not necessarily recognized. Getting more grass into the cows will lift milk production but it also has a major impact on lameness as underfed cows are much more susceptible to lameness.
Therefore, the two things I think are important to consider are:
- -what can be done to minimize time out of the paddock?
- -should I milk as many cows as I do?
