The biology and the behaviour
She shows you the problem before the bills arrive.
In the weeks around calving her calf and her rumen compete for room, her appetite falls just as her energy demand climbs, and she makes up the difference from her own body. None of this is new science. What matters on farm is that she shows it first in what she does.
Recorded on working US dairies, 2014–2017. Captions cover the narration and the founder on camera.
The squeeze
Room, appetite and demand all move the wrong way at once.
This is textbook transition biology, taught in every veterinary school. The order it arrives in is what makes the fresh pen so unforgiving.
The calving
41 kg
Mean birth weight of UK dairy calves
Calving is the hardest physical work of her year, and her repair starts on the same day as her milk.
Archer 2021 · UK
Room to eat
89%
of the pre-calving fall in intake lands in the final week
Across 699 Holsteins, intake fell 32% over the last three weeks of gestation, most of it in the last seven days.
Hayirli et al. 2002 · USA
Appetite
20–40%
fall in dry matter intake before she calves
And it climbs back only slowly after calving.
Hayirli & Grummer 2004 · USA and Canada
Demand
Severalfold
Her udder, four days after calving
Within 4 d of parturition, mammary demands for glucose, amino acids, and fatty acids are severalfold those of the pregnant uterus before term.
Bell 1995 · USA
Behaviour before the bills
The first signs are in what she does.
She hangs back in the fresh pen, moves less and makes fewer visits to the feed barrier. Your stockmen see it first, and the collars, boluses and parlour meters you already run record it.
You already know what a fresh cow short of energy looks like. That is why, on a trial, you’ll spot the change in the bright-green-sleeved test cows before any figure moves.
About 3 in 5 UK dairy farmers already use automated cow monitoring. Barraclough 2020 · UK
Off her feed
80%+
of acute disorders showed in feeding behaviour at least a day before farm staff diagnosed them
González et al. 2008 · UK
Less time eating
1.72×
higher odds of severe metritis for every 10 minutes less daily feeding time in the week before calving
Huzzey et al. 2007 · Canada
Less cud chewing
2,689
lactations: rumination in the 21 days after calving was lowest in the cows whose milk fell furthest below prediction
Kemel et al. 2025 · Netherlands and Belgium
The first weeks after calving
Most of it starts in the first weeks after calving.
Ketosis, metritis, milk fever and displaced abomasums cluster in the same few weeks, and one makes the next more likely.
UK herds
59.8%
median herd prevalence of raised BHB and/or NEFA in the first 20 days in milk
BHB and NEFA are the blood markers vets use for an excessive energy deficit. From 84,369 cows on 1,748 UK farms.
Macrae et al. 2019 · UK
UK fresh cows
31%
herd average of ketosis in UK fresh cows
The same field study found 43% in Germany, 53% in France and 46% in the Netherlands.
Berge & Vertenten 2014 · five European countries
One leads to another
1.5 · 9.5 · 5.0×
greater odds of metritis, clinical ketosis and displaced abomasum in cows with subclinical ketosis
Suthar et al. 2013 · ten European countries
The uterus
Up to 40%
of dairy cows have metritis within a week of calving
Sheldon et al. 2009 · UK
Negative energy balance
The gap has a name. Body condition tells you how deep it runs.
Some condition loss after calving is normal. What to watch for is the cow dropping condition faster than her penmates: off her feed, slow to get up, falling behind the group.
How long
50–100days
of condition loss after calving
Roche et al. 2009 · New Zealand, France and Ireland
One condition score
1,611MJ
of energy, in a 650 kg cow
385 Mcal × 4.184 MJ/Mcal = 1,611 MJ
NASEM 2021 · USA
Putting it back
+35%
more feed energy than the score held
520 Mcal × 4.184 = 2,176 MJ · 520 ÷ 385 = 1.35 → 35% more
NASEM 2021 · USA
Condition spent in the fresh pen has to be bought back in feed later in the lactation, at a premium. That is why the next film prices body condition as a bill of its own.
The evidence behind this page · 16 sources
Every figure on this page traces to a named source we hold in full. Where a figure is a DMI Impact calculation or our own commercial observation, the page says so beside it.
- Mostert PF (2018) The impact of diseases in dairy cows on greenhouse gas emissions and economic performance. PhD thesis, Wageningen University · Netherlands · doi.org/10.18174/445487
- Archer SC (2021) An observational study of growth rate and body weight variance partition for UK dairy calves from birth to 20 weeks of age. JDS Communications 2(5):248–252 · UK · doi.org/10.3168/jdsc.2020-0068
- Hayirli A, Grummer RR, Nordheim EV, Crump PM (2002) Animal and dietary factors affecting feed intake during the prefresh transition period in Holsteins. J Dairy Sci 85:3430–3443 · USA · doi.org/10.3168/jds.S0022-0302(02)74431-7
- Hayirli A, Grummer RR (2004) Factors affecting dry matter intake prepartum in relationship to etiology of peripartum lipid-related metabolic disorders. Can J Anim Sci 84:337–347 · USA and Canada · doi.org/10.4141/A03-122
- Bell AW (1995) Regulation of organic nutrient metabolism during transition from late pregnancy to early lactation. J Anim Sci 73:2804–2819 · USA · doi.org/10.2527/1995.7392804x
- Grummer RR, Mashek DG, Hayirli A (2004) Dry matter intake and energy balance in the transition period. Vet Clin Food Anim · USA · doi.org/10.1016/j.cvfa.2004.06.013
- González LA, Tolkamp BJ, Coffey MP, Ferret A, Kyriazakis I (2008) Changes in feeding behavior as possible indicators for the automatic monitoring of health disorders in dairy cows. J Dairy Sci · UK · doi.org/10.3168/jds.2007-0530
- Huzzey JM, Veira DM, Weary DM, von Keyserlingk MAG (2007) Prepartum behavior and dry matter intake identify dairy cows at risk for metritis. J Dairy Sci · Canada · doi.org/10.3168/jds.2006-807
- Kemel C et al. (2025) Association of artificial intelligence-predicted milk yield residuals to behavioral patterns and transition success in multiparous dairy cows. J Dairy Sci · Netherlands and Belgium · doi.org/10.3168/jds.2024-26134
- Barraclough RAC (2020) The use of advanced technology to enhance monitoring of dairy cow health. University of Edinburgh · UK · era.ed.ac.uk
- Macrae AI et al. (2019) Prevalence of excessive negative energy balance in commercial United Kingdom dairy herds · UK
- Berge AC, Vertenten G (2014) A field study to determine the prevalence, dairy herd management systems, and fresh cow clinical conditions associated with ketosis in western European dairy herds. J Dairy Sci · Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands and UK · doi.org/10.3168/jds.2013-7163
- Suthar VS, Canelas-Raposo J, Deniz A, Heuwieser W (2013) Prevalence of subclinical ketosis and relationships with postpartum diseases in European dairy cows. J Dairy Sci 96:2925–2938 · ten European countries · doi.org/10.3168/jds.2012-6035
- Sheldon IM et al. (2009) Defining postpartum uterine disease and the mechanisms of infection and immunity in the female reproductive tract in cattle. Biol Reprod · UK · doi.org/10.1095/biolreprod.109.077370
- Roche JR, Friggens NC, Kay JK, Fisher MW, Stafford KJ, Berry DP (2009) Body condition score and its association with dairy cow productivity, health, and welfare. J Dairy Sci · New Zealand, France and Ireland · doi.org/10.3168/jds.2009-2431
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2021) Nutrient Requirements of Dairy Cattle, 8th revised edition, Chapter 3 (p.34) · USA · nationalacademies.org. The MJ figures are a DMI Impact conversion at 4.184 MJ per Mcal, shown beside them.
