Feeding the Fresh Cow

Nutritional management of the transition cow has been a topic of intense research focus for more than 20 years (Grummer, 1995), and during this time many nutritional innovations for the transition cow have been developed and deployed within the dairy industry. Among others, these include decreasing the dietary cation-anion difference of the prepartum diet for management of hypocalcemia, the introduction of “controlled energy” dietary strategies for dry cows to improve the dynamics of energy metabolism and dry matter intake (DMI) during the peripartal period, increased focus on metabolizable protein and amino acid supply to the prepartum cow with some evidence of improved postcalving performance, and the targeted supply of nutrients (e.g., rumen-protected choline) to improve aspects of metabolic health and productivity of transition cows. Furthermore, the importance of management of nonnutritional factors (e.g. stocking density, commingling of multiparous and primiparous cows preand postpartum, streamlining grouping changes for transition cows, and mitigating heat stress) is now recognized as a pivotal part of optimizing transition cow health and performance (Cook and Nordlund, 2004; Tao and Dahl, 2013). Collectively, these improvements in both nutritional management of transition cows and management of nonnutritional factors have led to greatly improved health and performance on many dairy farms.