The early postpartum period is the major risk period for metabolic disorders of high-yielding dairy cows. Relatively little is known about the relationship between feeding behavior and metabolic disorders. The objectives were to investigate differences in feeding behavior between cows with clinical metabolic disorders and healthy cows, and to determine whether feeding behavior characteristics could be used to identify sub-clinical metabolic disorders. Data on feeding behavior characteristics and feed intake of 47 German Holstein multiparous dairy cows from 7th to 105th day of lactation were collected using automatic feeders and electronic identification. Seventeen cows with diagnosed clinical metabolic disorders (milk fever, ketosis, retained placenta and displacement of the abomasum) within the first week of lactation were compared with 18 healthy cows (no metabolic disorders and other diseases) over 15 weeks of lactation. Eight cows with out of normal reference values of blood parameters: NEFA (>800 µmol/l), BHBA (>1000 µmol/l), and ASAT (> 105 U/l), but without any clinical problems were compared with 14 cows without clinical or sub-clinical metabolic disorders during the second and third week of lactation. Cows with clinical metabolic disorders had shorter meal duration (37.6 vs. 40.3 min., P<0.01). The healthy cows spent 26 min longer at total daily mealtime than cows with clinical metabolic disorders (277.1 vs. 251.2 min, P<0.01). The mean meal duration for cows with sub-clinical metabolic disorders was about 6 min shorter than that for healthy cows in the second and third week of lactation, respectively (26.1 and 29.5min vs. 32.07 and 35.46 min, respectively, P<0.01). In the same periods, cows with metabolic disorders spent about 40 min less at total daily mealtime than healthy cows (190.0 and 233.6 min vs. 217.0 and 256.4 min, respectively P<0.01). Sensor-based monitoring of feeding behavior may be useful to detect metabolic disorders of dairy cows.