Animal Condition
Animal condition is the cornerstone of livestock production. If your animals are not in good enough condition to fulfil the next task the farm needs them to perform then then economics of the farm is going to take a hit. When you transition to regenerative grazing you are 100% in charge of the catering. You are doing Precision Farming and if you are not precise in your grazing and lick management things will go wrong. Your cows are now like your dogs. You are in 100% in charge of the food that ends up in their bowl each day. If you don't feed them they don't eat. If you feed them too little their performance goes down.
Under a set stocking scenario where livestocks are turned into a camp for an extended period the daily provisioning is under the charge of the livestock (assuming the farmer has balanced carrying capacity and stocking rate for the period in the camp). So if you are 100% in charge it is up to you to make sure that the animals are getting the daily intake they require - both in terms of quantity and quality.
Fortunately for cattle farmers cattle come with some gauges, these can be as important to keep your eyes on as the oil gauge on your machinery.
Gut Fill
The first is gut fill. This shows you that your cow has a full rumen, if her rumen is not full then she is missing out. Hungry cattle do not perform, hungry cattle also break out of their grazing strip, usually after knock-off time. The Hunger Hollow (honger holte in Afrikaans) is located on the LEFT flank of cattle, where the rumen comes up against the skin of the animal. If the sun sets on an empty hunger hollow then that is a day of lost production.
Dung Score
The fresh dung of cattle tells you how well digestion is functioning in your cattle. If their diet is not balanced then this shows in the consistency of their dung. The dung is telling you about what was happening in the rumen a day ago. It is an early warning system about the roughage:protein balance in the cow's diet and whether you are getting it right or wrong. Dung, like gut fill, should be checked every day. We have created a basic three level scale, you want the middle one.
'The Dairy' The dung is runny, like a dairy cow's. The protein content in the diet is high, and fermentation is fast. Nutrients and water are passing through your cow and being wasted. Make a change!
‛Pumpkin Pie' This is want you want, soft but not runny. The rumen is balanced, and the dung is soft but stays together. There is often a little crater on the top.
‛The Baker' It looks like knot bread or a croissant. The dung is in layers and too hard. Rumen throughput is slow, and your cow is not getting what it needs. The diet contains too much fibre and not enough protein. Make a change!
Body Condition Score
This is a slower gauge than the previous two, it tells you how you have performed as the head caterer for the last two weeks. Ideally you want to maintain body condition score (BCS) between 2.5 and 3.5 on the 5 point scale. Although the scale has 5 points no one should be farming at score 1 or score 5. 1 is dying and 5 is obese. BCS at calving gives the best indication of a cow's re-conception chances. If BCS >2,5 then a conception rate above 75% is a possibility. Below BCS 2 conception rate falls rapidly.
There are a number of places to look at to gauge the BCS of a cow. The easiest area is the short rib or T-bone (shown in the image above), where the degree of fill above the short rib is what you are looking at. That area must at worst be flat; when it becomes concave, your cow's score is BCS-2. If it is convex, it's a BCS-3 or more.
The second indicator position is the hook bone, more specifically, the gap between the hook bone and the spine. The same measuring applies here, it must not be concave.
The critical score to focus on is 2. A cow with a BCS-2 has used all its fat reserves and is using muscle to supplement daily requirements. This mostly happens when a cow is lactating and the grass is not green. If BCS-2s make up 5% or more of your herd, you need to make urgent grazing or supplementation changes to bring that number back below 5%. People think that the challenge of body conditioning their whole herd is an overwhelming prospect but you do not need to do that. It is easy to count the BCS-2s as you walk through your herd. Start counting and hopefully when you get through the herd the total of 2s you counted is less than 5% of the total number in the herd. If there are say 300 cows in the herd and you count 15 2s and you still have half the herd to count, you have a problem.
Other areas that are used in scoring are the ribs and the pin bones from behind. You should not be seeing the individual ribs, and the pin bone should be covered in muscle.