The transition period around calving is the most welfare-critical phase in a dairy cow's annual cycle. Metabolic disease, stress, and pain during this period affect millions of cows.
The transition period is the most welfare-risky phase of the dairy production cycle, concentrating multiple sources of stress and disease into a six-week window. A cow calving for the first time or the fifth time faces the metabolic demands of milk production beginning simultaneously with recovery from parturition, often in a changed social environment. The metabolic diseases of the transition period — ketosis, milk fever, metritis — cause significant suffering that affects not just the cow's wellbeing but her productivity for the entire subsequent lactation. Good transition cow management is simultaneously welfare-positive and economically beneficial: prevention through nutrition, monitoring, and prompt treatment of emerging disease reduces suffering while protecting productivity. The welfare gap on many farms is not knowledge but implementation.