DeLaval's Farm Systems Manager for Oceania, Ron Mulder spoke to The Country Early Edition's Rowena Duncum about the importance of Body Condition Scores for cows.
January to March is traditionally a feed deficit time, so farmers need to ensure cows stay healthy, in good condition and continue to produce milk. It's also important not to over or underfeed cows with expensive supplements.
Good Body Condition Scoring can be is a big part of that as it helps figure out which cows are going to need some help to maintain body reserves. The problem is a lot of farmers don't bother doing it consistently as it's time consuming and very subjective – you can get the same cow with a different score depending on who is doing the assessment.
"It's one of those things that's in the too hard basket," says Mulder, but there is a product distributed by DeLaval and LIC in New Zealand that can take make the task a lot less tedious.
Listen below to hear Ron explain how this technology works and what benefits it can bring to farmers:
