Cattle farm husbandry – body condition scoring

Cattle, farming, husbandry, body condition scoring, easy method to learn & use, implication of scoring errors, replacing body condition

By Dr Clive Dalton

What is Body Condition Scoring ( Condition Scoring)?

• Condition Scoring (CS) is when you assess a beast’s status by the amount of condition it is carrying. “Condition” means fat under the skin that you can see and feel, but fat reserves in and around internal organs such as kidneys that you cannot see are also part of the story.
  
• Condition scoring also includes muscle mass, because when the cow has used up all its fat reserves it will break down muscle tissue to provide energy to survive.
• From an animal’s condition you judge its state of current health and well-being and its ability to keep on producing.
• Weighing an animal tells you its overall body mass but not necessarily its condition. So you can have a heavy big-framed cow that is a walking skeleton, that weighs the same as a light-weight cow rolling in fat.
• So both weight and CS are needed to give the total picture. Scales will alert you to changes very quickly, whereas changes in condition score may be more difficult to pick up quickly, especially if you see your stock every day.
• Visiting friends never tell you what your stock are really like and never tell you when they are getting really skinny. If asked, it’s safest to score all animals at CS 4.5. This is the “non-confrontational” condition score that won’t upset anyone and you’ll be asked back.
• There are a few different methods to CS cows but they all use the same scale. This goes from 1 to 10, but a CS1 cow would be so thin it would be near death, and a CS 10 cow would be so fat it would be at death’s door through obesity or ready to explode! So a scale from 1 to 8 is enough.
• The same scale applies to both beef and dairy cattle, but you don’t see any dairy cows above CS 6.
• Don’t try to get more accurate than assessing half scores as the whole business is not an exact science. Indeed, if you can score accurately and honestly to single scores, that would be good enough for most management decisions.
  

What happens if you get it wrong?
If you unknowingly ‘underscore’ cows by being too generous with your scores – there are a number of consequences, some very serious. The following is what can happen, either singly or in combination:

• Cows are milked too long at the end of lactation when they should be dried off. This risks milk quality penalties from high Somatic Cell Counts.
• You won’t feed animals enough when their nutritional needs are critical. This is the with dairy cows coming up to calving when your error will only feed them maintenance, and they need much more. Cows should calve at the recommended CS 5 and heifers at CS 5.5.
• So immediately after calving, and during the weeks up and including peak lactation when there is maximum nutritional drain on the cow, her performance will be below expectations. The cow will not regain this lost production during the rest of the lactation resulting in large financial loss.
• It takes 180kg of Dry Matter to replace 1 Condition Score, on top of maintenance, and this can take at least 3 weeks to happen with good quality feed.
• This works out at feeding a thin cow when dry the same as if she was in full milk, so farmers regularly run out of time, and they run out of good quality pasture and supplements to achieve the result.
• Increasing CS from 3-4 increases production by an extra 17.5kg MS, from 3.5-4.5 will increase MS by 15kg MS, and increasing from 4-5 will produce an extra 12kg MS.
• Inevitably low CS cows cause more work for staff at calving as thin cows are more prone to problems.
• Low CS cows will have more metabolic diseases in late pregnancy, at calving and in early lactation. Production losses will occur and even deaths.
• Higher calf mortality and retained foetal membranes (RFM) are likely.
• Low CS cows are slow to return to heat, after calving and will be late calving next season with consequent loss of income.
• Research has shown that at CS 4 18% cows will be non-cyclers, whereas cows at CS5 only 9.7% will not have cycled.
• Maintaining an annual calving pattern will need resorting to inductions (abortions) to fix this, which means veterinary costs, has animal welfare implications and includes the loss of genetic potential from the calves which either die or must be culled.
• Thin cows calving late will need hormone treatment devices to start them off cycling, and this requires vet and drug charges.
• Thin cows which calve late, will most likely need more than one insemination to get pregnant and this will increase costs and waste good semen.
• You will need the added cost of obtaining a bull to mate these late cows when the AI period is over.
• Your farm budget will now have extra (unplanned) costs which bank managers don’t like.
• Cows under CS 3 are officially ‘emaciated’ and risk a prosecution under the Animal Welfare Act 1999. As a ‘boner’ cow killed for meat, their meat yield is too low for an economic return to the meat processor.
• Working with skinny cows is depressing for staff and can kill motivation. They will be looking for other jobs and changing staff can cost the farm business thousands of dollars.
  

An easy method to learn
The following method was developed by M. Ellis and C. Dalton at the Waikato Polytechnic around 1998. There was an urgent need to find a quick, easy and repeatable method to teach new farming recruits as the current system was too vague. Learning how to CS had been far too big a mystery up till then, and we found that most farmers and veterinarians were consistently half a score too generous, and there were many others who were even a whole score wrong.

The problem was that none of us had actually been taught how to condition score; we were supposed to have learned it from photos of dairy cows’ rear ends. And none of us when challenged dared admit we couldn’t do it. So we always fudged and dived for the safety of “around 4.5”. If you felt threatened then you’d say 4.4 and if you felt confident you’d say 4.6. It was all a big con job and in too many situations nothing has changed today.

There are only two steps to learning how to do condition score using the Waikato Polytech method:

Step 1.
Learn where 7 points are on a cow in a set order from 1 to 7. Think of them as bus stops on a journey and you have to decide where to get off. (See Figure below).

Diagram to show the points to locate and feel in the cow

Step 2.
At each stop decide if you are at the right one, and if not, whether you should go back or forwards. As CS 5 is the middle of the range, and you won’t see many dairy cows above this, it’s a great place to start and then most often go up for beef and down for dairy cows.

Scoring going down from CS 5
Stop 1 – the hip bone.
Press the palm of your hand on the hip bone and feel if it’s rounded or flat.

• A rounded hip that fills your cupped palm is CS 5 or above.

Rounded hip well covered must be CS5 or above Viewed looking to the rear of the cow

• A flat hip is below CS 5 so go down to the next stop.

Very flat top on the hip bone of a thin Holstein Friesian cow.
This cow must be below CS5.

Use the palm of your hand to feel how flat it is

Stop 2. The backbone
Press your outstretched fingers along the backbone and “jiggle” them to feel any gaps between the vertebrae.

• If there are no hollows – that’s CS 4.5
• If you feel definite hollows and bumps for the vertebrae – that’s below CS 4.5. Go down to the next stop.

Ph0to of "bumpy" backbone. This cow must be below CS 4.5

On a hairy cow 'Jiggle' you fingers along the backbone to feel for hollows

Stop 3 –The pin bone “dimples”
The pin bone has a flat top and a bone that goes down from it in the shape of a capital letter “T”. With your finger and thumb, pinch the dimples at either side of the stem of the T. This bone is sometimes called the “tap” as it’s shaped like the top of a water tap.

• If there are no dimples – that’s CS 4.
• If there are dimples – that’s below CS 4. Go down to the next stop.
  

Pin bones showing the hollows (dimples) either side of the ridge in the centre of the pin bone.
This cow has no muscle or fat there so she cannot be above CS 4.

On a hairy cow use your finger and thumb to 'pinch' the dimples

Stop 4 – The rear-end view from the side
Here check the cow's rear end where the last bit of the pin bone sticks out. Look to see if she is concave (hollow), straight, or convex (protrudes). Make sure you view a straight leg that she has weight on, and not one that she has moved forward.

• Straight down or convex – that’s CS 3.5.
• Hollow (convex) – that’s below CS 3.5. Go down to the next stop.
  

Photo shows the hollow (concave) rear end of the cow behind the pin bones. She is missing a mass of muscle due to underfeeding. A cow in good condition will be vertical or convex in this area. She cannot be above CS 3.5

On a hairy cow, use your hand to feel for the protruding pin bone

Stop 5 – The shoulder
Here check the shape of the shoulder ridge with your thumb one side and fingers the other.

• Make sure the cow has its head up.
• If you feel a definite ridge – that’s below CS 3. Go down to the next stop.
  

This photo shows a very prominant shoulder ridge on this very skinny cow.
She cannot be above CS 3.

This photo shows where your hand is placed on the high point of the shoulder, near the shoulder blades. Here you can see the thumb being pressed in to feel any protruding bones at the side (see below).

Stop 6 – The side of the shoulder
Here feel the small bones that stick out from the sides of the shoulder vertebrae. So with thumb on one side and fingers opposite, squeeze to see what you can feel.

• No prominent bones is CS 2.5.
• Prominent bones and where your fingers go right below the processes, is below CS 2. Go to the next stop.
• Look back at the photo above and you can see that if you pressed at the sides of that shoulder ridge, she's so thin that your fingers would go right in.
  

Stop 7 – The pelvic ridge (the ski jump)
This is the sharp ridge on the pelvis that stretches from the backbone to the hip bone. Run your fingers along the cow’s back and over this bone like a ski jump to see if the journey is smooth, or the bone sticks up and blocks the way.

• If there is no sharp ridge sticking up – that’s CS 1.5
• If the ridge is very prominent and almost sticking through the skin – that’s CS 1.
  

Note very protruding pelvic ridge ( the ski jump).
When you run your hand along this cow's back it won't ski over the ridge.
They'll hit it head on and stop.

Picture shows the action of your hand as you slide it towards the back
of the cow over the 'ski jump'. Long hair on a skinny cow can hide how sharp the bone is.

KEY POINT: As far as animal welfare is concerned, veterinarians now accept that CS 3 or below as “emaciated” as the beast will have severely depleted fat reserves and will also have lost considerable muscle mass. It will require immediate action to improve its condition and health as you could easily risk prosecution.

Scoring going up from CS 5
In terms of animals at risk, any beast above CS 5 will have no problems. Indeed. above CS 6 the concern will be with obesity and the effects it may have on health such as at calving, and animals being too fat for the meat works. Forget about half scores between scores above CS 5.

• CS 6 - Rounded across the loin and you cannot feel the ends of the short ribs.
• CS 7 – Flat across the loin and you have to press really hard on the backbone to feel it.
• CS 8- Big ugly folds of fat hanging around the tail head.
  

Forget about scoring above this and call them all obese.

An obese pet cow - she must be at least CS 10 and very happy cow!

Scoring in the paddock from a distance
You’ll be doing most condition scoring in the paddock a distance from the animal, but you’ll find the close-up “hands-on” knowledge above will give you the confidence to score accurately from a distance, now that you know what to look for.

The impact of getting condition score wrong
Getting condition scoring wrong can have serious implications for the stock and your income. If you’re a bit skeptical about the importance of cow condition, consider these issues below that will compound if you underscore animals and don’t realise you are doing it:

The farmer who has put these cows for sale as "boners" probably
doesn't realise they are CS 2.5 and are "emaciated".

• You won’t feed the animals enough – they’ll probably get only maintenance when they need feed to replace lost condition on top of their production needs.
• Their performance will be below your expectations, and you may not notice until you have to spend money to fix things.
• Cows will be more prone to metabolic diseases in late pregnancy and at calving.
• Cows will be slow to return to heat after calving and will be late calving next season.
• So if you want to maintain an annual calving you will have to resort to inductions (abortions) to fix this and accept the cost and welfare implications.
• You’ll have to spend money on intra-vaginal hormone treatment devices to start them off cycling.
• Cows will need more than one insemination to get pregnant which will cost more and waste good semen.
• Your farm budget will now have some surprises, and you’ll have to explain them to your bank manager - and bank managers don’t like surprises.
• You’ll be the farmer in the district with the skinny cows and everybody will be talking about them behind your back. They won’t tell you of course. They’ll phone MAF or the SPCA first.
• If you have staff they will probably (or they should) leave to go and work with some decent well-fed stock.
  

Feeding to replace condition
The general rule is that it takes 180 kg of DM to replace 1 CS, above what the animal needs to be fed for maintenance. It’s extremely important to realise this is extra to maintenance. This 180kg is a very general value, and can vary from say 150kg DM for a small cow, to 250kg for a large cow.

And remember the impact of the time limit there may be to put this condition back. Many farmers have great intentions to build their stock up in condition before calving, when the accepted rule is that cows calve at CS 5 and heifers at CS 5.5. But in practice they regularly run out of time and run out of feed so never make their targets. They permanently have skinny stock so think this is normal and everyone else’s cows are too fat and their stocking rate is too low!

Beef farmers who buy boner dairy cows (that are nearly always skinny) to put weight on them for the export trade comment make an interesting comment. They have noticed that these poor beasts need a month’s total rest before they start to put on any weight at all because they are physically exhausted from the stress of being in a big herd and constantly disturbed for grazing and milking. It’s maybe why cows seem to need a much longer period to build up condition than the nutrition tables say!

Sheep Farm Husbandry - How to Condition Score Sheep

Sheep, body condition, condition scoring, description of method.

By Dr Clive Dalton

In assessing a sheep’s state of health, it’s a great help to know its liveweight. But this does not tell you it’s “condition” which is basically how fat or thin (skinny) it is. A heavy sheep could be skinny and a light sheep could be fat - so you need both live weight and condition to get the full story.

Where to feel?

• Stand at the side of the sheep and use your outstretched hand for the job.
• Lay your thumb along the backbone – pointing forward and use your fingers to feel the bones at the end of the “short ribs”.
  
• This will be easier on short-woolled sheep.

What to feel?

• In this area the backbone of the sheep (spine) has bones sticking up (vertical processes) and bones sticking out the side (horizontal processes).
• Both of these are used as the location points for scoring.
• These bones are covered first by muscles and then by a layer of fat.
• You have to assess both of these to decide on a score.
  

The scores used
The scores used go from CS Zero (completely emaciated), through CS 1, CS 2, CS 3, CS 4 to CS 5 (extremely obese). The details are below:

Score details

Score 0

• Rarely seen as the sheep would be near death. They are unfit to travel and unfit for human consumption. Such sheep would risk prosecution of the owner under the Animal Welfare Act 1999.
• No muscle can be felt between skin and bone.

Score 1

• The vertical (spine) and horizontal (lumbar) processes are prominent and sharp.
  
• You can easily push your fingers below the horizontals and each process can be clearly felt.
• The loin muscle is thin (wasted) with no fat cover over it.
• Such sheep will need urgent preferential treatment.
• GR measurement is 0-5mm.

Score 2

• The vertical processes are prominent but smooth.
• Individual processes can be felt only as corrugations and not deep troughs.
• The horizontal processes are smooth and rounded, but you can still press your fingers under them.
• The loin muscle is moderately deep but has little fat cover.
• GR measurement is 5-8mm.

Score 3

• The vertical processes are smooth and rounded.
• You can feel the bone with gentle pressure.
• The horizontal processes are also smooth and well covered.
• You’ll need to press fairly hard to feel the end of each one.
• The loin muscle is full with a moderate fat cover.
• GR measurement is 9-15mm.

Score 4

• The vertical processes can only be detected as a line.
• The ends of the horizontal processes cannot be felt.
• The loin muscles are full and have a thick cover of fat.
• GR measurement of 15-20mm.

Score 5

• You cannot feel the vertical processes even with strong pressure.
• There’s a dimple in the fat layers where the processes should be.
• The horizontal processes cannot be detected.
• The loin muscles are very full and covered with a thick layer of fat.
• There will also be heavy fat deposits in the rump area.
• GR measurement of over 21mm (overfat).

Minimal condition score targets
The table below shows some general target CS figures.

Disclaimer This material is provided in good faith for information purposes only, and the author does not accept any liability to any person for actions taken as a result of the information or advice (or the use of such information or advice) provided in these pages.

Condition Scoring (CS) Dairy Cows

 Cattle, farming, husbandry, body condition scoring, easy method to learn & use, implication of scoring errors, replacing body condition

Condition Scoring (CS) Dairy Cows

 By Dr Clive Dalton

 
You would think that everybody in New Zealand would know how to CS a cow. Well they don't. Let's check the history first.

History

1. CS has around for a long time. Ralph du Faur was the first one to describe it – maybe he invented the NZ system? The "NZ Farmer magazine reported du Faur's system in 1976.

2. The concept has been used in other countries for a long time using fewer scores.

3. The NZ system was described in detail in the 1970s by MAF's Te Awamutu farm adviser David Buxton. David wrote a detailed AgLink on the subject bristling with diagrams and black and white photos. It was comprehensive but hard going if you were not dedicated!

4. Then Livestock Improvement simplified the job by producing pictures in colour of cows backs and rear ends. This was much better and these were readily available until fairly recently.

5. For years at the Ruakura Dairy Farmers' open day we always had 2-3 cows on display with their CS written on their sides in large letters. Farmers learned little from this as they could not handle the cows.

6. This continued into the days of the Dairy Research Corporation (DRC) which morphed into Dexcel and again at open days cows were displayed with CS numbers on their sides. The learning I believe achieved was minimal.

7. Dexcel (now DairyNZ) continues to cover the subject at open days and in 1995 every farmer got a reference book with pictures of the same cow digitally altered to show different scores. It was reissued in 2008. This was welcomed by anxious MAF animal welfare officers who had to deal with skinny cows and needed a "gold standard" for reference in prosecutions. Dexcel even produced a DVD for farmers describing the NZ system.

8. So there has been no shortage of material over the years. The question is – how much of it has done any good? My feeling is – not a lot.

Some key points

1. Condition scoring is not a precise science.
2. The NZ system of 1 (near death) to 10 (obese) is far too complicated and it is not easy to learn.
3. But nobody ever complained and told the technical experts, consultants or teachers that it was too hard have they? Everyone kept quiet in case we exposed our mental limitations!
4. If the system was easy to learn, we would not have cows that fail to meet the well accepted CS of 5 for cows at calving – and there must be millions in North Island herds.
5. But every farmer knows that a cow must calve at CS 5 and a heifer at CS 5.5. He/she has been told this for decades and the financial implications of failure.
6. What is more, if CS is hard to learn – then it's hard to teach as the latter is the key to getting all staff members competent at scoring accurately. What's the point in having a system where you have to pay a consultant to do for you?
7. The biggest point of all! CS is a "target" that all animals in the herd have to reach, and was never meant to be an "average".
8. The concept of an average CS is daft and dangerous without a measure of the range around the average and the shape of the distribution.
9. Discussion groups were so predictable when asked what you thought the herd average CS was. The trick was always to say 4.5, especially if you were asked first, as 4.5 is non-confrontational. All the others would say "around 4.5". If you were feeling a bit bolshy say 4.4 or even 4.3, but if you wanted to please the hosts say "around 4.6 or 4.7". So the rule is - when in doubt use the "fudge" score of 4.5 and you'll never be a threat!
10. Experience from teaching is that most farmers, vets and consultants are at least half a score too generous so most cows at 5 are really 4.5 and the very popular 4.5 cows are in fact CS 4 or below. Some farmers and professionals are a whole score too high.
11. This should be no surprise as we were never taught how to CS, and we were certainly never tested to see how accurate and repeatable we were.
12. Presumably farmers were supposed to learn on their own from the LIC photos with help at Discussion Groups.
13. There are three conclusions turors come to when students don't learn. (a) - the students are dull, (b) - the material is inherently difficult (like maths) and (c) - the teaching is poor. Point (c) is the real problem but (a) and (b) always get the blame.
14. So after teaching a student, listen to them teaching someone else and then you'll hear what you said! Go over it again and get them to teach you.

All you need to know

The present system is too complicated so try this. It's based on only knowing three scores and it's probably all you need to know.

The traffic lights

You only need to know three scores:

1. GREEN: CS 5. The cow has rounded hips. Put you hand on the cow's hip bone and you cannot feel any flat area. The whole hip will fill your hand.
2. ORANGE: CS 4.5. Use the palm of your hand to see if you can feel a flat area on the top of her hip bone as it has a very flat top. Then "jiggle" your fingers along her spine in front of her hips to feel for bumps and hollows between the vertebrae. If she has flat hips and a bumpy back bone – she's a 4.5.
3. RED: CS 3. This cow has a very pointed shoulder (when it's head is up). It's like the ridge on Mont Cook with big hollows either side where all the muscle has gone. This cow is "emaciated".

Messages from the lights

• Green: GO: - cows have no problems.
• Orange. CAUTION: Too many farmers think they are greens. They still need feeding well. CS 4.5 is a useful working score for the cow and if you go down below this (by accident or design) - understand the consequences. You have to find the feed and the time to put it back. (1CS needs from 130-250 kg DM to replace).
• Red. DANGER: this is disaster as CS 3 is officially "emaciated" and you'll need a rapid rescue mission from here that will take large inputs of feed and time to respond. You could also end in court under the Animal Welfare Act 1999.

Forget about

• Using half scores.
• Using decimal places for scores between the half scores.
• Using herd average scores. These are the most dangerous things around as without a range in values around the average you can so easily be lulled into complacency.

Buy some scales

Dairy farmers never saw the need for scales, despite the fact that feeding cows or any animal for that matter is based on live weight for maintenance. Scales were considered to be too expensive and not necessary when Condition Scoring could be used instead.

This argument is no longer valid. When you live with cows every day it's hard to notice a slow decline in condition. Scales will show a weight change quickly (realising variation in gut fill in ruminants), and this will be seen long before there is a change in body condition. A small change in average weight will certainly alert you to check condition too.

You can't rely on visitors or friends to tell you that your cows are slipping in condition can you – they'll tell you if asked that the cows will average 4.5!

Scales don't tell lies and with modern systems are a valuable aid to feeding and animal health.