I have always been a big advocate of weighing growing beef and dairy youngstock as a means of monitoring output and performance, but should you be doing this on dairy cows also?  Is this not just more work and information overload?

Those farmers that weigh cows either manually once/twice per year or automatically on a daily/weekly basis see the following benefits.

1. Knowing weight ensures more accurate feeding for maintenance.
2. Bodyweight changes in 1st lactation animals is related to how well they perform i.e. get back in calf etc.
3. Drug/vaccine administration is based on bodyweight, so this becomes more accurate and efficient.
4. Youngstock growth weight targets are based on mature cow bodyweights in herd.
5. Production performance per kg of liveweight is a very good KPI to monitor individual cow performance.  The bigger the cow, the more dry matter (DM) required just to maintain bodyweight e.g. each extra 100kg liveweight requires 900kg DM/year or £135/cow/year.  Some of the heaviest cows in your herd are not necessarily the most productive.  Weigh cows 4 months after calving to get a good average weight and compare vs either annual cow litres/kg liveweight or annual cow milk solids/kg liveweight.  For example, across a number of herds in milk solid terms there can be a 100%+ variation within the same lactation between cows.  0.6 kg/MS/kg → 1.65 MS/kg liveweight range is quite common for a 7,000L herd.  This could have a combined lower production and higher feed cost of £700/cow between the bottom 10% of herd vs top 10% of your herd.

How efficient is your herd?  Do you know who the passengers really are?  Feed is your biggest cost on a livestock farm.  You may grow lots of forage, but how efficient are you at utilising it?  Contact Gerard at gerardfinnan@fcgagric.com or your local FCG office for more information.