Why Your Fresh Cows Aren't Eating: A Troubleshooting Checklist

A fresh cow that does not eat is telling you something. Intake in the first weeks after calving drives milk, health and the next pregnancy, and a cow that is off feed can slide into trouble quickly. This checklist is a general guide for a typical herd, not a diagnosis. If a cow is sick, off feed and acting dull, call your veterinarian. Treatment, including drugs and doses, is a veterinary decision.

Step 1: Is it one cow or the group?

This single question splits the problem in half. If one or two cows are off feed, suspect an individual disease. If many cows are eating poorly, suspect something about the feed, the bunk, the pen or the weather. Check the pen's average intake and refusals before walking the barn.

Step 2: Rule out disease in the individual cow

Appetite is the first thing many fresh-cow diseases take away. Monitoring programs often rely on checking every fresh cow for appetite, attitude and appearance daily. Common causes to raise with your vet include:

• Ketosis. The Merck Veterinary Manual's ketosis page covers this energy-balance disorder of early lactation, where cows are mobilizing body fat faster than they can use it.
• Low blood calcium (milk fever and subclinical forms). Weak, slow cows with poor appetite around calving.
• Metritis and retained placenta. Uterine infection can suppress appetite and cut milk.
• Displaced abomasum. A cow with reduced appetite, reduced manure and falling milk.
• Mastitis, lameness and pneumonia. Any painful or febrile condition takes the edge off appetite.

Take the cow's temperature, look at rumen fill and manure, and talk to your vet about testing. Many of these conditions feed on each other, so one problem can start another.

Step 3: Check the ration and how it is delivered

If the group is off, start with the feed itself. Our guide to TMR and ration basics covers mixing and sorting.

• Consistency: Is the mix the same load to load? Over-mixed or under-mixed feed leads to sorting.
• Particle size: An eXtension transition checklist recommends using a particle separator and checking manure for fiber length, grain particles and gas bubbles.
• Forage quality: Spoiled, hot or moldy silage lowers intake fast. Our guide to forage quality is a good place to start.
• Mycotoxins: A Farm and Dairy article on non-cycling cows lists mycotoxin contamination in the TMR as a factor that can disrupt cows, so ask your nutritionist about testing if intake is poor and nothing else explains it.
• Ration changes: Did anything change in the past two weeks, such as an ingredient swap, a new forage or a supplier?

Step 4: Check the numbers

Targets give you something to measure. The eXtension transition checklist lists fresh-pen intake targets for Holsteins, such as more than about 38 pounds of dry matter for mixed-parity fresh cows in the first three weeks, and notes that first-lactation cows eat less than older cows. It also recommends weighing feed delivered and refusals daily, aiming for a small steady refusal rate of around 5 percent. Treat those figures as guideposts and ask your nutritionist for targets that fit your herd and ration.

Step 5: Look at bunk access and competition

The University of Kentucky's discussion of stocking density notes that when bunk space per cow falls, cows eat fewer meals per day and eating patterns shift at peak feeding times. It recommends about 30 inches of bunk space for fresh cows, and stocking at or below 80 percent for transition cows, with fresh-cow ketosis risk lower when stocking is below 100 percent. See Kentucky's stocking density paper for details. Walk the bunk at peak feeding time and watch whether timid cows, and especially first-calf heifers, are pushed off.

Step 6: Check comfort, water and heat

• Stalls: Cows that cannot lie down comfortably eat less. Our guide to freestall comfort is relevant.
• Water: Check trough flow, cleanliness and space. The eXtension checklist suggests a minimum of about 3 linear inches of trough per cow in a transition pen, split across more than one location.
• Heat: University of Missouri Extension says intake falls as temperatures climb and early lactation cows are hit hardest. See our heat stress guide.
• Feed freshness: Push up feed often. The Farm and Dairy article mentions pushing up feed hourly.

Step 7: Look upstream at the close-up pen

Prepartum intake predicts postpartum intake. If fresh cows are eating poorly across several calvings, look at what happened in the three weeks before calving. Our guide to transition cow management covers the dry-period side, and our article on the transition pen that works covers design.

A fast triage table

What you see	Start here
One dull cow, low milk, warm	Call the vet: infection or metabolic disease
Cow with low appetite, little manure, falling milk	Call the vet: possible displaced abomasum or ketosis
Whole pen eats less, hot weather	Cooling, water, feed freshness
Whole pen eats less, sorting evident	Mixing, particle size, forage
Heifers lag older cows	Bunk competition, separate group

For wider resources, see agriculture.directory and this farm.fm take on dairy nutrition. This site is independent and not affiliated with any breed association.