Post by josiegirl on Oct 4, 2020 13:09:57 GMT -5
ok so this is embarrassing but here are some pictures of my way too thin cow. i've posted pictures of her before and got your advice and have tried to follow it. she now gets 14 lbs of 16% dairy ration per day, she was being rotationally grazed onto fresh clover grass mix pasture ( not the best but pretty decent), in addition to giving her as much very nice 2nd cutting clover grass mix hay as she wanted in the barn at night/mornings. she's got a selenium/mineral block in her field with her plus she's got regular loose beef mineral in the stall at night/ mornings. i don't do anything fancy like BOSS or kelp at the moment, although if we end up buying a ton of a custom made grain mix at a time from the feed mill we will be adding those (have to talk to a nutritionist first because we'd like to make a mix that can be fed to our pig herd as well if thats possible). she calved July 1st and is giving me 2 and a half gallons of milk (down from 2 3/4 or 3 gallons) per morning and whatever the calf drinks, i think people here have estimated she's probably giving 7 gallons or so total. i used to feed her 4 lbs of grain a day because like most people i want to feed a mostly grass diet, but i made a post i think maybe a month or two ago and was told to up her feed so i upped it to 8 lbs then upped it again after another post lol. she is due to be AI'd like next week by our neighbor using her natural heat in conjunction with shots. i really really thought she would have put on weight by now getting this much grain and nice hay but she's just not. she's got a healthy appetite eats her hay DEVOURS her grain lol of course. her poos are fine so i dont think it's johnne's although tomorrow im going to be calling a vet to see how much bloodwork/fecal sample would cost so i can cross that off the list. I wormed her maybe a month ago using safeguard pellets, although i didnt realize til afterwards that i had given some to our pig, so it wasn't the full dose. stupid i know but i thought i had taken just a few out to give to the chickens but forgot about the pigs. should i worm her again? what else am i doing wrong? i've seen some posts saying too much protein is bad for weight gain, but also posts saying you can't give too much protein. could someone clarify? the hay she's getting has a lot of clover as does the field she's on. should i just wean the calf? is it even possible for her to get pregnant in this condition? i've seen some cows on here that were worse than her but i've also seen people on the forum say that cows much fatter than her were still skinny. i would think her body condition is like 1.5 or something. too thin in any case.
i know my main mistake was not getting her in good enough condition to calve in mainly by not understanding how long the grass needs to be for them to get any sustenance out of pasture. while she was pregnant she would spend all day on a pasture that maybe to a horse would be adequate but not a cow. so she was not in good enough condition to calve in. we also didn't have the best hay until around august, although it was ok 2nd cutting alfalfa mix it was from the last year so was yellowed. we did start rotationally grazing her though so she's been on about 8 inch long grass til just a few days ago because its pretty cold here its not growing anymore. we also did not listen to the conventional 2 lbs grain per gallon milk given, wanting to be mostly grass fed (although i did start upping after my first body condition post, although apparently not fast enough). i also think i had this mindset that oh yeah dairy animals are always bony, and thinking she was normal until i learned more about body condition. moral of the story for all the newbies, listen to the ladies on the forum and get your cow into condition BEFORE she calves or gets too thin!!! at this point our little lady won't be calving again til september next year if we're lucky.
i know my main mistake was not getting her in good enough condition to calve in mainly by not understanding how long the grass needs to be for them to get any sustenance out of pasture. while she was pregnant she would spend all day on a pasture that maybe to a horse would be adequate but not a cow. so she was not in good enough condition to calve in. we also didn't have the best hay until around august, although it was ok 2nd cutting alfalfa mix it was from the last year so was yellowed. we did start rotationally grazing her though so she's been on about 8 inch long grass til just a few days ago because its pretty cold here its not growing anymore. we also did not listen to the conventional 2 lbs grain per gallon milk given, wanting to be mostly grass fed (although i did start upping after my first body condition post, although apparently not fast enough). i also think i had this mindset that oh yeah dairy animals are always bony, and thinking she was normal until i learned more about body condition. moral of the story for all the newbies, listen to the ladies on the forum and get your cow into condition BEFORE she calves or gets too thin!!! at this point our little lady won't be calving again til september next year if we're lucky.