Body Condition Scoring and Judging in Dairy Cattle

Body condition scoring is a measurement of degree of fatness or thinness on the basis of animal health and nutritional state provided to the dairy cattle in the dairy farm.

It (BCS) is a simplest tool to evaluate the condition of dairy cattle, nutrition of herd, milk production and reproductive performance of the cattle. This technique is performed on the basis of scoring with accuracy in several developed as well as developing countries. This is the commonly used technique in which scores are given to respective animal on the basis of its health or body condition. Principle behind this includes visually observation of animal and with or without palpation of transverse process of vertebrae, tail head, pin bone, hook bone, spinous process, space between 12 and 13 rib and sacral crest (seven major skeleton check points) and assigning numeric value (score) to each point based on the fat deposition over these check points then comparison is done using the scale. For large producing farm routine monitoring of body condition plays important role to assess the dairy cattle for better production and it helps to detect the potential health problems occurrence which might reduce the milk production further.