Some Thoughts on Body Condition Scoring of Cows

Abstract

As far as technologies go, body condition scoring is one of the most useful and least expensive. No computers, no scales – heck, you don’t even have to pen your cows to apply it. Although body condition was certainly used before the 1960s, I think the late Jim Wiltbank, PhD. at the Texas Agricultural Research Sub-Station No. 1 in Beeville, Texas was one of the first to apply it to subsequent reproductive success. He scored cooperator herds in the South Texas and Gulf Coast on a simple basis: Thin, Average or Fat before calving and found that the average and fat cows had higher pregnancy rates at next breeding. Since then, body condition scores have been more accurately associated with fat cover or lack of it and have been expanded to nine scores (see Table 1) although dairy operators and Australians use a five-point score. In spite of the fact that body condition score (BCS) has been useful to determine breed back or pregnancy rate for over 50 years, a recent National Animal Health Monitoring Survey and my own survey data show that less than 15 percent of beef producers use it.