Scoring cows 60-90 days before calving allows you to evaluate your dry cow nutritional program while allowing enough time prior to calving for "emergency feeding" if needed. Although body condition should be evaluated at calving, it may be difficult to increase body condition since lactation requires most of the energy a cow consumes. If environmental conditions at the time of calving are mild, cows may be able to reach BCS 5 or 6 by breeding time. However, this is unlikely to occur when the weather is cold or high quality feeds are limited.