Thinking About Predicting Dyscalcemia in Fresh Cows

At a barn recently I came upon the fresh cow pen and began to ponder whether we could predict which of these gals would become dyscalcemic, or worse. Professor Jess McArt from Cornell University happened to be in the barn at the same time and saw me staring into the pen while in this trance-like state. As she is one of the nicest people on the planet, she naturally stopped to see if I needed help with anything.

I explained to Dr. McArt that I was curious if there is a way to predict which cows might get dyscalcemia (you might remember from a previous blog that dyscalcemia is defined as serum calcium levels that drop below 8.8 mg/dL after 4 DIM).

Lucky for us, Dr. McArt has indeed studied this in her work titled “Patterns of periparturient rumination and activity time in multiparous Holstein cows with and without dyscalcemia in early lactation,” published in July of 2024.

Her study found that some cows, post-calving, are like marathon runners while others are more like couch potatoes. The difference? Calcium levels! Cows with low calcium (dyscalcemia) were less active and chewed less cud in the first few days after giving birth compared to their calcium-rich buddies. They tried using some logistic regression models to spot the calcium-deficient cows early on by tracking their activity and chewing. The good news? They were pretty good at identifying healthy cows. The bad news? They missed a few of the calcium-deprived ones. Still, their results show that using sensor data can help manage dairy cows better

While science isn’t yet able to predict which cows will go into a state of subclinical hypocalcemia that could lead to milk fever and downers, we do know that we can help prevent a significant number of cows from falling into that state. There is abundant data showing that herds that are fed Nutricow® CalBal® experience a 50% reduction in dyscalcemia compared to herds that fed the typical acidified diet. Read more about CalBal® here.