Thanks very much, Bruce. Well, given the time of year, it seemed appropriate to talk a little bit about cows and sheep in the run-up to calving. So today's webinar is entitled Managing Sheep and Suckler cows in Lake Gestation.
So summary of what we're planning to cover today, talking a little bit about managing body condition in late gestation, how to formulate rations for ewes and suckler cows, a bit of revision there, and then thinking about how we can monitor nutritional status in, suckler cows and ewes, so thinking about appropriate animals to blood sample and what metabolic profiles can tell us about these animals in the run-up to giving birth. So starting with sheep and just thinking a little bit about their nutrition in the run up to the lambing. First thing we need to worry about is how much they can actually eat, so their dry matter intakes.
And the approximate intakes of a U as a proportion of body weight in late gestation is around 2.1%. And as you can see, that's substantially less than what they'll be eating at peak lactation or for a non-pregnant ewe.
That's a function of faecal size, taking up space in the abdomen, really restricting the intakes of these animals in the run up to lambing. Now it's not just body weight that will affect intakes, it will be other things such as the type of feed and how palatable it is. Management conditions, so how's the feed being presented, what's the stocking density like, how much trough or bunker space is there for the number of animals in a group, and then also concurrent disease.
And later on, I'll show you some slides that demonstrate the impact of things like lameness on the metabolic status. Once we've had a think about how much a sheep can eat, it's useful to have a ballpark figure in your mind, and for a 70 kg ewe, we're talking around 1.5 kgs of dry matter a day in the station.
So after thinking about the volume of what they'll eat, we need to think about how much energy they need. And of course the amount of energy they need can be calculated quite precisely based on the body weight of the ewe, how many foetuses she's got, her growth requirements, she's a young animal, the temperature, the time of year, and things like in body compositions, changes in body condition. But this type of precision rationing is is rarely that appropriate for cheap, and it's always useful just to have some ballpark figures for a 70 kg you in your head.
So for a year maintenance, you're talking around 10 megajoules, rising to 20 megajoules at the time of part tuition if she's carrying twins, and then at lactation, if she's giving around 2.5 litres a day, you're peaking at around 30 megajoules. That 1020, 30 number for carrying you is useful when sense checking and thinking about about rations.
Protein requirements are a little bit more complicated because we have to consider two types of protein. So we've got the effective ruin degradable protein, and that's the protein that's metabolised by the ruin microbes. We've got microbial protein, which is the protein synthesised by those microbes from the ERDP.
And then we've got dietary undegradable protein. So that's the protein that goes straight to the ewe from the food, isn't being metabolised by the ruin microbes. So taken together, we call this metabolizable protein.
This is the MP system of, of estimating protein. There are other systems out there. None of them are perfect, however, they are a useful approximation when rationing.
The summary of MP is that it's a combination of the dietary and degradable protein, the DUP, and microbial protein, and there's a little adjustment factor in here to the actual amount of microbial protein that's available to you. So if you want to calculate protein requirements, so the protein supply for you, it's the VUP in the diet, plus this proportion of the microbial protein. That's roughly how we can calculate how much she is eating, and how much energy and protein she'll need.
So how can we go about calculating MCPs and microbial protein bit, because the DUP can be directly measured from from either silage analysis or using typical values for feeds. So DUP is relatively easy to get, but microbial protein, we just need to think a little bit about it. And MCP it it needs from integral metabolizable energy, so it needs energy in the room and synthesised, and the amount of MCP that you can make from this energy depends on the stage of production.
So a you that's in late pregnancy can produce about 10 grammes of microbial protein per megajoule of of FME that that she's eating. And usually on a grass-based ration, so grass silage or use of grass, it's FME that's limiting. And so in most situations, the microbial protein is based on these multiples of FME.
So if you want to work out the microbial protein, it's usually 10 times the amount of FME in the diet. But I'll look at this, a little bit later in, in more practical terms, which will hopefully make it a little bit easier, lies. So in terms of body condition, we're aiming to have used lambing and at least body condition 2.5 out of 5, and a change of about half a unit equates to around 5% of body weight.
And it takes around 6 to 8 weeks to gain the body condition score unit. So if we want to change body condition, improve it, let's say in the run up to allowing, we do need to plan well in advance to be able to do that. And about 50 grammes of body weight loss gives around 1 megajoule of of ME, and, and 6 grammes of, of metaly protein.
If we think about 70 kg, it changes half a body condition score, that releases around 70 megajoules, and, and we can include that in our calculations when thinking about rationing sheep late gestation. Now, with the ewe carrying triplets, it's very, very hard to actually safely feed them the full energy requirements that they need. So generally we aim to be providing ewes with around 85% of their ME requirements, but we can get all of their protein requirements.
So we're looking to get them around 100% of their metabolliable protein requirements. Now, I've put this table in in the webinar notes, and this just gives a summary of the amount of energy and the amount of protein in both ME and MP that you will need at different stages in pregnan. As I mentioned earlier, you can do this in a computer programme much, much more accurately, but these approximations in this table are usually good enough to, to be able to look at a ration and see whether it's efficient or not.
So What do we need to do when we think about a ration, whether we're wondering if a ration is sufficient, if we're involved in putting a ration together, which admittedly a lot of vets are not, but it's not something that that's too tricky, and increasingly it's something that that farm vets will get involved with, especially when thinking about production problems and whether they use as a flock are meeting their potential. But before we can ration, we need to know the body weight of the sheep. We need to know how many lambs we're going to be rationing for.
It's very useful to know whether they're housed or grazed, and then think about the feeding system, you know, are they going to be fed in a TMR? Are they going to be fed, concentrating in the trough, and, forages and land feeders? So the next thing to do is look at the forages.
Important to ascertain what's actually locally available. This year has been a really bad year for forages. There are parts of the country where they were running out of forages back in the autumn.
So what's available will really determine where you start with like the ration. You need to get some analysis, you know, what quality is it, and then is, is there enough of it to get you through, all the way through to the spring grass it through. In terms of forage analysis, this has to be the starting point for any ration.
It's still very frustrating how many farmers will either not do a forage analysis, or they'll do a forage analysis back in October, and it'll be terrible, and they'll do absolutely nothing to account for that and and deal with that in the run up to farming. So it does need to start with forage analysis, and that does need to be the basis with which a diet is formulated. And the important characteristics to look at on a forage analysis, you know, the real, the real sort of ones to pay attention to dry matter, so we get an idea of how much actual food they're going to be eating when they're eating, let's say, a few kilos of forage, the energy and digestibility so the devalue of that forage, the protein in there, and then also think about how well it's fermented.
So, what's it's pH ash and NH3 levels. Visual observation is very useful. Does it look mouldy?
Is it very butyri? And then how, how is it being fed? Is it being, put around feeder?
Is it being chopped up? How was it prepared when it went into the clamp? And then when you're supplementing it, how are you going to supplement its going to be top dressed or supplement's going to be fed separately?
You can start to put these numbers into a spreadsheet. This is a spreadsheet that I use. You'll see just here the table that I showed you on the previous slide.
It's just a reference, and I pop in here the weight of the you, how much energy she needs, and how much proteins just from this table. So here we've got an 80 kg Uwe that needs 22.5 megajoules of any, so she's a triplet carrying you, and therefore she needs around 148 grammes protein.
And then I've just listed some feeds down here and, and I can play with the numbers as to how much we're feeding and then dry matter and then just calculates how much food they're eating simplified times in these. So the first thing to do is say, well, how much, how much can they eat and we can put in sort of a mix of let's say hailage and maize silage together up to the point where we get to around 99% of requirements. And you can see that's simply calculated here from that 2% of 2.1% of body weight.
So it starts off with some forages that gets us to 100% or there enough of intake. So the first question is, are the energy demands met and this column here calculates the energy and the rations. So that's simply finding the weight by the dry matter, by the ME in the diet, and adding that up together to give us 17.5 megajoules, and that works out as around 78% of 22.5.
So we're a little bit short on energy, simply feeding these triplet carrying ewes with, with forest. Next thing is we can look at the protein demands and going through those equations I showed you before. There's a few more columns that I've shown here.
This is the DUP from, from the forage analysis. This is how much, MP you can synthesise based on the FME and this is how much ERDP there is in the diet. And actually, because there's quite a lot of maize silage in this, it's actually the ERDP that limits the amount of microbial protein, sorry, metabolizable protein.
In the diet. So we therefore use this lower number. So if these two columns, if if the ERDP in the diet is less than the FME, then, then you go with this number.
So adding that all up together gives us around 100 grammes of MPs, so we're only about 68% requirement. So as it stands, forage only ration unsurprisingly for triplet carrying you. So what can we do?
Well, we can play with some straights. I've, I've put in here 700 grammes of oats, 300 grammes of soya, I pull back on the forages a little bit, and we're still at around 100% of requirements, and you can see here that we're now at around 100% of MP requirements and as close as we're going to get the energy that is used. E in late.
So that ration on paperworks. It's important not to exceed 1 kg of concentrate, for an 80 kg use. So we're looking at about 50% concentrate maximum on a dry matter basis and then not to feed more than 500 grammes concentrate at any particular feed.
That's really to avoid the risk of acidosis in these sheep. I, I'm not here selling soya for the North American soy industry. The question is, could, could we do this another way, what happens if we pull the soya out?
Well, if we pull the soy out and simply replace it with oats, yeah, we're still meeting energy requirements, but we're really quite short on protein. We're only giving around 3/4s of protein as needed. Many parts of the country, proteins such as rape meal are available.
We see here if, if we do a split of oats and rape meal again, we can meet the energy requirements and in this instance, we can also meet the protein requirements. So we don't have to use soya in in lateration use, it can be done with other protein sources. A few practical tips before we look at some example rations and what the uses thought to those rations, forage really must be more than a equal to about 30% dry matter in, in sheep.
Poor energy silage, and what I mean by that is silage at under 10 megajoules of ME. It really is a disaster and if farmers have got forage analysis at, you know, 9, 8.5 ME, they really need to be thinking carefully about how they're going to be feeding, especially the triplet carrying ewes.
So to concentrate feeding, starting at around 0.25 kg per year per day and then stepping up gradually helps to reduce the risk of any acidosis. And then also those very bets that might be on the webinar tonight.
A late gestation ewe is an animal that's under metabolic stress, and thinking of her a little bit like a dairy cow can help in terms of looking at factors that could be restricting intakes that you, so thinking about trust space, palatability of the diet, and also maximising dry matter intake. But how can we assess nutrition adequacy in in sheep flocks? Body condition scorings important, and another use, another tool that's available is profiling.
That's something that we receive a lot of blood for at this time of year, and it's interesting to see that as the season progresses and we start seeing more of the flocks on more marginal systems. Metabolic status of view deteriorating and, and the blood results we see sort of, you know, mid to late February, can indicate quite a few problems, particularly with energy. And when doing metabolic profile, typically you'd bleed sheep around 3 weeks before lambing, because this is around the peak risk time, for twin lamb.
Again, for carving herds, we'll talk about sucker cows in a minute, similar time around 3 week calving. And ideally we sample from each feeding group. So if you are being fed according to feeding number, we'd get some from the singles, twins, triplets, or if there's a thin group and a fat group or a gimmer group, we try and sample representatively from each group.
And really we're looking at a minimum of 5 views or cows. Her career. What we want to do is, ensure that we know whether the flock had been scanned or unscanned, but it can be used for both, it's just different cutoffs.
We used for interpreting energy balance and views. So sort of information to think about when you're looking at the nutritional status of a flock. What's the rough weight of, of the animals in the group, what's their body condition at an individual level, so you know, are these fat ewes at 4.5?
Are they really thin at 2 or 1.5, or are they where where we want them to be? Are they housed outdoors, what forages are on offer, and how much concentrates currently being fed?
Because with sheep metabolic profiles you can actually calculate how much more concentrate they need to close their energy gap. It's important to know the weeks, in laminal carving and then the foetal number, if, if they've been scanned and any recent changes in the ration. So what do you, what do you ask for when, when sending these off for testing?
So these are hydroxybuyrates, an important ketone body when we think about, energy balance. Ua nitrogen helps us to get a measure of effective room and degradable protein intakes. Algorithm gives us a measure of long term protein status.
And then globulin is one thing we look for in cattle for acute inflammation. The major minerals, magnesium and phosphate, and then, also things like copper or GSHPS for selenium. And for sheep specifically, calcium may be appropriate depending on clinical time, and I'll show you some specific examples of, of where that can be useful.
In terms of sheep, what, what sort of targets we're looking for, what are our optimal values? Well, if sheep have been scanned and fed according to the number of foetuses they're carrying, then we really want the group average butyrate to be below 1.1.
If they're unscanned, we need to be a bit stricter, so we want it to be low below 0.9. The other things like albumin, we want them to be over 30 and you be nitrogen, so over 1 point.
In terms of acting on elevated butyrate or or BHP levels, we can actually use the group means. So this is a, a great in practise article, it's quite a few years old now, 1985, that allows you to. Determine how much additional energy the sheep needs.
So if you've got a group that have been scanned and fed according to the number of foetuses they're carrying, your target is 1 millimo per litre. If your group mean was 2.5, for example, and the body weight of your ewes was around 70 kg, then you can see you need around 4 megas a day concentrate feeding.
And, and we can talk through how, how that's calculated. But in sheep at least you can use the group mean to actually adjust concentrate feeding to stave off the risk of, pregnant. So let's look at some real rations now, and, and what she thought of them and the sorts of things that you can do better at.
So these are m uses, they're sort of conditions of 2.5 out of 5. So as an average there would be some potentially thinner individuals in the group looking at the individual results, there's one there that's thinner 2, and then the other 4 that were sampled are on target.
So these are housed triplet carrying ewes and they're currently getting 1 kg of an 18% protein nut, and they're just about to land the one week of lambing. And I can see here that energy wise, they are in trouble. We've got 2 uses here in clinical ketosis with levels over 3, and we've got another you here that's in subclinical ketosis in a group mean of 2.
And of course, as mentioned before, the target is 1, they need 4 megajoules more. They actually close the gap in this. In this flock, they would need to eat 1.3 kg of concentrate, and that really is breaching that recommended 1 kg maximum.
So these girls are going to start dropping below 50% concentrate on a dry matter basis. And that's not ideal. That's, that's not really what we want to be doing.
There was no forage analysis sent in, with this ration, but the presumption would be that the silage ME is not really up for the job. And that you just can't get the energy into these sheep that they need. If you are going to breach that 1 kg, sort of limit, then you're going to have to go to 3 times a day feeding, and have a pretty sort of serious chat with the clients about the risk of acidosis.
And the other thing we need to consider here is, is driving intakes. A few clues here that intakes might be part of the issue. There's a you here with a low urea nitrogen, whilst all the others have quite good results.
So this may well be a you that's not got as good access to feed. Again, there are some BOHBs that are quite good, so that one's 0.53.
There are a few clues here that actually improving intakes of the forage may help to improve the energy balance of the group overall. That's one ration. Here we've got twin carrying news, and they're currently being fed hay.
We don't know whether they're housed or not, but looking at the nitrogen results, I'd assume that they are housed and they're getting 1.5 pounds of nuts, . Again, we've got signs of clinical places.
We've got here a review of 4.2 millimo per litre and and a group mean of 1.86.
So, if we want to hit our target of 1, then we're looking for around 2.5 megajoules more energy based on those graphs that I showed you previously. So to achieve that, they need to go up to, 2 pounds of concentrate feeding.
Again, you know, across as many feeds as possible. Us are generally in good body condition, which is good news. Again, a few clues that intakes might be quite uneven.
We've got a big, big range in our VOHBs. So it's not just always about the sheer amount of concentrate that's being fed. It's also about thinking, you know, how much of this forage are they eating, and, and is that even across the group.
So here we've got a slightly complicated ration. So they're housed ewes, getting maize silage and grass silage, and good body condition in general, although the individual level, we can see there are some individualsin uses. And actually, even though the rations a bit weird, the, the, energy balance is generally pretty good.
So there's one you there with an elevated BOHP. But actually, that's within the acceptable range given that the rest of the years they've got pretty good UHP results. What's interesting here though is that the real nitrogen results are all quite low.
So this flock has quite marginal ERDP status. A poor ERDP can result in poor rumen function and inefficient utilisation, rationing. And if we look up here as what's going in, they, they have got oats and maize and there is soya and a protein balance, but.
Clearly, either the grass silage is quite low in crude protein, or they've not got their mix of maize and grass silage quite right. And addressing that should help to bring, the amount of ERDP going into the ration into line. The other thing to note here is the albumin results are quite low in, in quite a few individual sheep, and you know the result of 21.6 against the cut of 30 is very low.
So that's indicating this flock have got quite a poor long term protein status. And the first port of call here is really looking for concurrent diseases and parasitism, so things like liver fluke and hemocosis, that may be responsible for, for bringing down those albumin results at a flock level. Looking at this ration here, we've got a few individual ewes with slightly elevated VOHBs, a few ewes with low urea nitrogens, and actually, on the whole, the energy and protein balance isn't too bad.
So this would really typically come down to intake. We wouldn't be recommending they're increasing, the amount of concentrate going into these sheep. However, they do need to be improving the intakes across the group.
So thinking about stocking density, thinking about presentation, the forages, are they fresh and palatable, and is there sufficient access for all the uses in the group? It's worth thinking a little bit about body condition. You know, these use our body condition score 1.5.
If you remember earlier I was saying that we can't really ration them for much more than 85%, maybe 90% of their energy requirements at lambing. You don't have an awful lot of reserves to call on here. So you uses going into lambing thin are always a little bit of a concern, but at least in this profile, they are on the whole, managing to meet their energy requirements.
But they are still 4 weeks off lambing and therefore, their needs will increase in, in those last few weeks. So looking at, at this ration, they're on big bale silage, it's got an Emmy of 10.5, and, and they're outside, but they're not outside on grass, they're outside on sweeds.
And they've just been given some protein buckets. And what's clear here is even though the energy balance is fine, the nitrogen results are very, very low. So at this level, our target is 1.7, so the mean of 0.57, they really are at risk of pretty poor rumen function, that can then have impacts on things like lamb survival, and, and clusterm production.
And that's not surprising when you look at Swedes, they're around 9 to 12% dry matter, so there's not an awful lot of dry matter in them, and they're only around 10 to 11% crude protein. And we don't have any silage analysis here or any indication of intakes. So these views really do need to improve, their, their forage intakes of forage of reasonable, true protein content.
So looking a little bit at the, be silage protein levels, and then also how much of that they're eating. So again looking at us that are outside but slightly different setup, so they're out of grass at the moment and your nitrogengens are generally pretty good in cutting use of grass. You can see here they're all much higher than the ones you've seen on the previous results, you're all over 3 and some.
Up to 5 4.94 there. That's to be expected when it grasps as long as they're getting reasonable dry matter intakes, and then it's a great source to the LDP.
The energy results generally looking pretty good. So, you know, even though the rations a bit odd, you know, they're feeding cattleria nuts, you pellets, a wheat and barley mix and and, sugar pulp, it's working. The one big sort of health warning here is do you be aware of copper levels with, uses that are being fed cattle, cattle rear and nuts, and I'd be very nervous about ever really letting sheep eat, eat cattle feed.
Thankfully, on this profile, the copper results in the blood at least, are not elevated. However, copper is stored in the liver and it will take some time for copper levels in the blood to rise. So it's something that, that I wouldn't recommend, but in terms of energy and protein, that's working quite well for these ewes.
Again, another pattern here of low albumins, given the average condition of around 2, I would be suspicious potentially of something like a fluke, or hemoncosis in this flock and take some faecal samples, to make sure that. If, if it is present that it's treated in the run up to lambing would certainly be a good idea, when, when looking at sheep like this. So a few other things that, that often are worth considering in, in late gestation, so things like mineral balance.
So these are some interesting magnesium results that we've seen in the past. So, magnesium requirements are generally a bit higher in, in the run-up to both lambing and calving in cattle. And on this, farm, they they've got use out of grass, they're getting supplementary silage, and they're getting 80% crude protein rolls at 0.4% magnesium, which is actually quite low.
And this flock's got a history of clinical hypermaginemia. What you can see here is that the single carrying ewes are getting less concentrate, and these are the twins and these are the triplets, and the amount of concentrate on offer increases, the average magnesium concentration in, in the sheep also increases. So it's just worth thinking a little bit about how minerals are being offered, and if they're being offered in a mineralized concentrate, that actually that needs to be taken into account if you're feeding, more concentrates your triplets and and less concentrate to your singles.
You may not actually be getting enough mineral, with, with sort of a low, lower magnesium content mineral like that. And then finally, calcium is, is, sometimes worth thinking about. Clinical signs can be quite similar to pregnancy toxaemia.
And in, in this flock, they'd had 5 certain deaths, and, and predominantly in the triplet bearing uses, and they were housed and they were being fed ad lib silage and then also access to fodder beet. And on top of that, they were getting 0.5 kg of 80% nut fed twice a day.
And interestingly here we can see there's actually quite a few low calciums. And the fodder beats of note in this rationroom because fodder beet can tulate calcium, and that may well be part of the low calcium. So it's not something you'd routinely look for on a metabolic profile, but it can be useful if you've got, either sudden deaths or signs that are similar to pregnancy toxaemia, but you don't think it is pregnancy toxaemia in a flock.
But the start I said, think a little bit about current diseases and how that can affect metabolic status. So in the last slide thinking about sheep here, this was an instant flock that decided to metabolic profile, lame and non-lame sheep in a flock. It's a Suffolk Cross Texel e flock, and they were all a pasture and they would be given adlib silage in addition, and they were being fed all a 1 pound per head, 18% nut.
And on top of that, there was some energy in all the tubs that were put out. So in green, we can see all of the, non-lame sheep that were sampled in red or the lame sheep, and it's quite striking to see that the mean BHPs, the mean butyrate level, in, in the lame use is 1.6 versus 0.73.
That's really hammering home the point that even though the ration is the same, they're all in the same mob. The lame sheep are spending less time eating and therefore the energy balance is substantially worse than that of the sound sheep. So concurrent disease can have a real big impact on on metabolic status, independent of the ration that's on offer or or the way it's being offered.
Interestingly, the albumin results are pretty much the same between the two and, and actually quite, quite low, so quite well below the 30 grammes per litre. Classically, we think of albumin as in, in a reverse acute phase protein, so we would have expected the albumins to be a bit lower in the lame sheep. The main sign here really is, is the higher BRHP results.
The only thing just worth noting is that there are a few elevated coppers in the, in that lame group, and mild elevations in copper like this are quite common in sheep that are suffering from an inflammatory condition. Cerrooplasmin is an acute phase protein and therefore blood copper levels will be elevated a little, in, in sheep that have a concurrent inflammatory disease problem. OK, so that was sheep, and just wanted to spend a bit of time now thinking about about suckler cows and really starting off that discussion around, you know, what a suckler cow has to do, because it's quite different to a sheep in some ways in that, you know, ewes don't have to get pregnant again until the next autumn time.
They're under a lot more metabolic pressure in terms of carrying twins and triplets. But in terms of suckler cows, just like sheep, we want them to carve unaided, just like sheep, we want them to produce good quality and cluster and milk. Unlike sheep, we want them to, conceive in less than 80 days after calving.
And then finally, we can, we want her to be a car weaning. And, and suckler farming's particularly marginal, so she's got to stop spending money. She can't, she can't go out there, and spend a lot of food on, on the rations.
So, rationing and managing suckler cows really is within the limitations of, of very tight margins. That said, restricting feed in late gestation, that last month of pregnancy, so things like starvation, straw only diets are not a good idea in, in suckler cows. They do have knock-on effects on fertility and caring use.
The common reason that suckler farmers will actually used to justify a starvation diet is because they're trying to avoid overly large carbs and therefore avoid dystopia. And really the message there is that we should be using genetics to avoid dystopia, and using nutritional restriction to stunt calves is not really a sustainable approach for the industry to, to drive down. Calving difficulties.
So avoiding calving difficulties really is a matter of genetics, and in that last month of pregnancy, we should be feeding cows to, to meet their current energy requirements and protein requirements so that they can do all of these jobs. And if we don't, then they're going to struggle to do everything we're asking of them, and, and particularly fertility can suffer. So this is lifted straight from the AHDB handbook and thinking a little bit about body conditions.
So when I was talking about sheep, I really focused on the principles of rationing. Those principles hold true for suckler cows, and then talking a little bit more detail about body condition in suckler cows. Again, the principles in general are are similar, cheap.
So we're aiming for suckler cows to be a body condition 2.5 calving in the spring, and if, and if they're spring carvers, they can gain condition whilst at grass, and we can bring them in in higher condition and allow them to lose some of that condition, during mid-pregnancy. The one bit I change about this, HDB slide is we want them to be in body conditions for 2.5 months before calving, not at turnout in the spring.
So we want them to be stable and at 2.5, well before they're due to carve and then to hold that condition, all the way through to turnout. Autumn carvers a bit trickier.
They, they are sort of not in sync with, with grass growth as much. So, when they carve in the autumn, they're going to be a little bit more conditioned at 3, and, and they're going to be allowed to lose condition, through the service and turnout. This is the key thing, they can't be allowed to lose condition too quickly.
If they drop quickly to 2.5 before they're pregnant, that can affect our conception rates. And then we don't want them really dropping below 2.5 before we then send them back out onto the spring crazy.
So why is that so important? So this is not new data, this is from the Meat and Livestock Commission days. But if the herd on average around low body condition score 2 at mating.
Then the number of calves weaned per 100 cows put the bus around 70. At 2 to 2.5, then it's around 85.
That's probably the ballpark figure for a UK average at the moment. And then if they're 2.5 to 3, and then we're in 95 cows per 100 cows.
So you can see there's a big impact on, on future fertility performance, based on body conditions and that's why we're really aiming to ensure that sucker cows are calving don't drop below 2.5. So that's our target.
If they're a long way under 2.5, then, not only have we got issues with fertility, but we may have issues with things like calf figuring and difficulty carving. And then if they're over 3.5, so if they're 4 to 4.5 or 5, then that extra fat's gonna make theotion more like.
But the important message here just to stress from the previous slide is do not try and change any condition in that month. We need to get them set up, we may need to plan our body condition as far back as the late summer, early autumn, so that we can get feeding right so that they come up to calving in right. In terms of what principles we can use, and we need to think about that body condition cycle and and and target.
When do we body condition score and what action do we take, and then how does that affect our summer grazing management types of forages we're going to use in the winter, and what's available, how much is there, and then we can ration cows based on, on their body condition and their production cycle. And if we're investigating problems. It's nearly always energy and protein that that would be our first port of call.
And whilst mineral trace elements do occur, they're they're, they're relatively rare compared to protein. In terms of monitoring, suckler cal nutrition, it really does hang around body condition scoring. It's the most useful.
We can take action based on those scores. We can think about feedstocks and silage analysis as well, but the condition of the animals will give us a much better indication of how well they're utilising those. Things like live weight gain and target weights, they're good for measuring performance, but they're too late, as is fertility performance to really make changes in the advanced problems and that's why we, we generally recommend using body condition.
In other ways you can look at nutritional status is blood testing that we talked about in the sheep, and I'll show a few example rations with the metabote profiles to see what cows sort of different rations. Based on that body condition scoring or other information, we can think about grouping cows and calving to allow us to manage their nutrition. We could group them based on predicted calving date, for example, and that can allow us to target that good quality feeding in those last 3 weeks of pregnancy.
We don't really want to be feeding cows that are only 6 months in gestation the same way that we would be treating ones that are 3 or 4 weeks away from calving. We can group them by body condition, so we can try and slim down fat cows, or we can try and supplement thin cows. And we can also group heifers separately, particularly given that heifers may need a bit of additional protein because it's still laying down, muscle.
It's still growing to frame, and reining to carve heiers at 2 years old, and ideally a couple of weeks before the cows, before the main block, so that they've then got time to slip a little bit with the calving pattern because it will inevitably take a little bit longer. So what can we do about manage managing over fat cows, then, if possible, put in a separate group that allows us to think about management. We can wean the calves later so we can use the calves to draw a bit of condition off them.
If we're going to reduce energy intakes to get conditioned off them, we do need to maintain ruin. We don't want that rumen to shrink down. So if we're going to restrict grazing, we we should have got ad-lib straw access.
During the winter when they're housed, we can feed them a mix of silage and straw to reduce the energy density of the ration. If you're going for a straw-only approach to thin fat cows down, it's really important that they get some protein supplementation, because otherwise you run a high risk of, of ruminal impaction, and, and problems associated with poor ruin function. But as mentioned before, you'd really try to avoid underfeeding in the last month of pregnancy, certainly during mating, and this can be a particular problem in autumn carvers.
Thin cows certainly look at underlying diseases, particularly things like fluke and yonies, and, and if they've got known problems, cutting them out of the herds, things like laying this or chronic pneumonia. We can creep calves at foot or wean the calves earlier to take some of the pressure off the cows. And then if possible to put them in a separate group, we can increase the grazing allowances in the summer, or we can, bring them in earlier in the winter and, and give them additional supplementation if necessary.
Minerals wise, then calcium and phosphorus, a crops are generally met from grass, but you know, milking suckler cows may need some supplementation. The one big thing we've seen this year, and we show some data from a study we did with the HDB is thinking about, magnesium supplementation in late pregnancy. It's important in terms of reducing milk fever, which, given the dairy genetics that still in quite a few of our subtler herds, it is important.
Of course, important in terms of avoiding grass staggers, and, and also slow carvings. Magnes is probably best offered either top dressed in a mineral or through bonuses concentrate. We tend to find that herds, supplementing through the water or through buckets, have much more variable magnesium results in their cows.
Of course farmers love trace elements, something that they, they worry a lot about, and you know, there are some that are important for car a bit viability and fertility, so things like selenium iodine, are, are important, but it's worth remembering that oversupplementation of copper can be just as harmful as under supplementation. And there's some real issues with, with trace elements around costs, you know, is it cost effective? Some of these minerals are very expensive and probably don't need to be.
What's the most effective, route to supplementation? And then can we really focus that spend and supplementation at high risk periods, so we need to be supplementing all the time, or can we, focus our supplementation on, that late pregnancy and, and, when the bills go out of service time. So where does it commonly go wrong, cows are too thin, underbody conditions got food, or those that are too fat, so 3.5, and those, that are underfed at mating.
Minimum imbalances wise, it's really thinking about the most cost effective way of supplementing them, particularly this year, running out of forages. So planning early, using things like forage alternatives, straw, forage of places like brewers' grains or pressed pulps early on in the season to try and preserve forage stocks as much as possible for for late late pregnancy. So thinking about rationing in that last month of gestation, stressing that point of giving a cow enough to meet her current needs, then depending on the size of the cow, she's going to be between 90 and 100 megajoules of ME.
Protein wise, we, we could go really on crude protein and suckler cows, and they need a minimum of 9%. Depending on intakes, they may need a little bit more than that. So if intakes are excellent, then many herds will get on at 9%.
But if intakes are restricted, then it may be safer to have sort of a 10 or 11% crude protein ration. And then minerals, they'll need 100 to 150 grammes of dry suckler cow mineral. And, and what I mean by that is one that's higher in magnesium and not, not zero or dairy type low calcium but lower in calcium.
And that's in contrast to fattening minerals, and unfortunately, we are seeing quite a few suckler herds still offering fattening minerals to late gestation suckler cows, which of course are low in magnesium and high in calcium to aid bone growth, and, and they're really not great for ensuring the magnesium levels in suckler cows, right. But once you've got the basics and and there's not too much to that in terms of rationing. The real focus is on intakes, especially with many suckler systems, having poorer presentation of feed, so making sure the rations fresh and palatable, trying to avoid lots of group and ration changes, and also really trying to avoid overcrowding to ensure that they can achieve the intake that they need.
So, in terms of summary, thinking about rationing and management, always analyse the forage, you feed the straits based on, on the forage analysis, so you're minimising the straits you need to feed and really tailoring them to the quality of the forage that year. Getting a good estimate of the dry matter intakes, we can make sure that they are eating enough, and we're typically talking suckler cows, at least 12 kg of, of dry matter intake. And then in terms of minerals are the top dressing those.
Put it into a TMR wherever it's. Of course, we can ask the cows what they think to ration it and blood sample them and, and look at energy proteins. We did that with HDB this year across, we sampled just under 1000 suckler cows across 83 herds in Scotland and England.
And what was quite interesting, we focused on, on the energy and protein balance where about a third of the suckler cows that we blood sampled had elevated neither in the run up to calving. So we're mobilising body fat reserves an excessive rate, and negative energy balance. And then nearly 2/3 of the cows we sampled had low urea nitrogen results, so we're failing to get enough ERDP in their ration.
And then around a third of the cows we sampled had low magnesium, despite the fact that they were getting some kind of mineral. And that was often due to the fact that they were being offered mineral in buckets, where the magnesium supplementation, was not being that effective, or, and they were being given the wrong type of minerals. So, as I mentioned before, a grower mineral.
So just finishing off with a few example rations and the sorts of take home messages from those. So this is a suckler herd that were given supposedly ad lib maize and ad-lib grass silage, and it's good quality stuff, you know, it's got a good devalue on the maize, not so good on, on the grass, but, reasonable crude protein level 11%. He a little bit low, on, on, on the grass silage there, but pretty good on the maize sage too.
If that's ad lib, they should be doing OK on that. The metabolic profile's telling us that they're really not. So you've got really high need for that cow there, for example, is in real trouble with the with the need for results of 2.2, and we've got pretty low urea nitrogen results.
So what this is telling us is that intakes really are a problem here and and getting a few low magnesiums and a few normal magnesiums is classic of, of that sort of situation where they've got a rash in front of them that looks sort of sensible, but it's not eating enough of it to get, to get what they need from the ration. So thinking suckler systems, think very much about are they getting enough dry matter into the. That said, you don't need rocket fuel, so this is a very simple system.
They just got, ad lib grass silage and a mineral, good quality grass silage, 13% protein, 10.5 ME, but certainly not rocket fuel, and complete clean bill of health. So these cows are just about to carve and there's no evidence that the mobilising body fat reserves, and they've got good short and long term protein status and the mineral status as well.
So it can be done all off forage and with a nice simple system provided the intakes are where they need to be. That said, 2 kg of grass silage isn't enough, so this grass silage is rocket fuel. They're on 12 megajoules of ME and nearly 15% crude protein, but they're only getting 2 kg of it, and they're being expected to eat 10 kg of straw.
The dry matter in this herd intake is going to be nowhere near this 10 or 12 kg minimum that we'd be recommending. You're probably only going to be eating 5 kg of straw a day. That's 4.5 kgs of dry matter there, and then that's, you know, not even 1 kg of grass silage dry matter.
So the dry matter intakes here are insufficient because they're not being offered enough grass silage, even though it's of excellent quality. And you can see that here is a couple of cows with some energy grumbles with high nether, but what's really striking are the low urea nitrogen results. So even though that grass diet is good in crude protein, the total, metabolizable protein supply and the amount of ERDP in the diet going to these cows is not sufficient.
High straw rations can have a work well, so these cows were being offered 6 kgs of straw, 4.5 kgs of of a reasonable quality grass silage, good quality grass silage, and then just shy of 2 kg of rape meal, and that ration is working really well, good energy results, a couple of marginal results, but actually most of them normal. So we'd be pretty happy with that as a ration.
Here's an example of a of a herd that's really struggling. Think a little bit about that flock that were on swedes that were struggling. Again, similar problem here, these cows were out on straw and turnips, but they wouldn't usually be left out this late.
The farmer had more turnips than they thought they were going to have, so they tried to leave the cows out a bit longer. We see here the rear nurtur results completely on the floor. So you know these cows are not getting anywhere near enough for ERDP and their dry matters are not where they need to be, to have a butyrate of 3, you know that cows pretty much clinical osis.
So, you know, some systems they really will struggle on if if intakes are not being managed very carefully. That said, these cows are out on brassicas here, so this herd had them out on kale and just a wee bit of, hay on offer to those cows grazing the kale. And you can see here that actually generally energy looks all right.
It's one cow here with a slightly elevated neh. U nitrogens are interesting because they're quite variables. We've got some very good ones here at 2.8, 2.3, the marginal ones.
You wonder here whether this is a herd where they haven't moved the fence for a couple of days, and there's some uneven intake. The point is you can actually, feed cows in the gestation on brassicas quite successfully, quite how you find calves in the quagmire of mud when feeding them kale and and hay is a different question. I think this herd actually brought them back onto a straw pad, just as calving started.
In terms of meeting requirements in late gestation, it can be done on brassica crops. For those of you in parts of the country that are feeding lots of whole crop, then it, it slides really just to make the point this is not enough protein in whole crops. They were getting ad lib whole crop that was, it's sort of very low in crude protein, even though it's never really particularly good in, in protein, and sort of reasonable ME.
And actually, we can see here these cows are in negative energy balance and they've got, poor ERDP supply as well. So if you're using whole crop, you will usually need additional, additional protein and there's probably a few issues with, with the intakes here as well, if they're being offered ad-lib whole crop and, and they've got quite a few cows with elevated me there. And then finally, just to make the point that suckler cows have been bred for years on the grass-based systems, and actually grazed grass is sufficient.
You know, these cows are getting nothing but grass just before calving, a couple of borderline, borderline leaf for there and elevated leaf for there, but actually, urea nitrogen's very, very good as you'd expect with grazed grass, and sort of a reasonable, reasonably acceptable ration they just, just on grazed grass. But the key thing, and looking at this herd a couple of weeks later, where more of the nefas has started to creep up, a couple there, but actually now, 5 out of 6 here with high nefas, they do need to be eating enough of it. And if the breast is getting a bit short and intake's not where they should be, they, they will still run into trouble.
Pras Cross. So in terms of doing any rationing or looking at rations for suckler cows, AHDB do quite a nice calculator where, where you can have a shot and, it's something that is, is pretty accessible, to vets. It's not something that you should be reluctant to get involved with.
And really in summary, you think about body condition, I talked a bit more in detail about body condition suckler cows than I did with sheep, but similar principles. I think about the constituents of the ration and if you're not confident rationing, then at least think about the presentation of the ration, and also think about, you know, flock and herd level diseases that may be affecting the energy and protein balance of the group. And you can always ask the sheep and the cows what they think.
So metabolic profiles way to look at the current energy balance of, of, of the group of animals, their short and long term protein balance, and then also their major mineral status. So I've, I've gone on a few minutes longer than intended, but, still before 9 o'clock, so happy to sort of take any questions and hang around if there's more than, more than 5 minutes of questions really. Alex, that was absolutely fabulous.
And there's a great saying that says, what gets measured improves. And I think you've you've summarised it so beautifully. Measure the body condition, measure the rations and measure what the animals think about it.
And you can pretty much get a really accurate picture and guidance to our farmers for that. Hopefully that's the plan. Yeah.
You just got to get the farmer to agree to be doing all these things. So. Folks, we don't seem to have any questions coming through.
That doesn't surprise me. Alex's presentation was absolutely fabulous. It covered so much of what we need to be thinking about and planning.
So Alex, thank you so much for your time. We really, really do appreciate it.