World Brown Swiss Conference 2022
Held October 1-5, 2022, in Madison, Wisconsin
Day 1 highlights - Farm Visits
Day 2 highlights - Farm Visits
Day 3 highlights - Conference Speakers (see below)
Day 4 & 5 - International Brown Swiss Show
Day 5 - World Premer Sale
2022 World Brown Swiss Conference – Day 3
By Emily Stumpf, Dairy Agenda Today
(edited and expanded by BSCBA staff)
The 2022 World Brown Swiss Conference concluded the third and final day with its conference meeting. Starting with Martin Rust, Vice Director of Braunvieh Schweiz, the Brown Swiss Association of Switzerland. He encouraged more Brown Swiss Breeders to genomic test. Genomics is no longer only for elite animals. Currently, breeders do genomic test, but more with bulls rather than with dams and young calves. Genomic testing is more prominent among the Holstein breed, but is slowly beginning to gain popularity within the Brown Swiss breed. Genomic testing has the advantage of being able to improve pedigrees, keep up with breeding values, manage risk of hereditary defects, and help with the decision-making of when to use sexed semen or beef semen.
Speaking next was dairy geneticist David Erf of the United States, a member of the Zoetis Dairy Technical Services team. He went more in-depth about the benefits of genomic testing. Once again, genomic testing can improve genetic progress, improve a herd faster, and all of the information can be used throughout the life of the animal. He also talked about the topic of DWP$-Dairy Wellness Profitability Index. All of the animals that genomically test in the top 25% are more profitable and have fewer health problems compared to the animals in the lower 76-100%. The animals in lower percentages have been seen to leave the herd earlier than the ones in the top 25%.
Following was David Kendall of the United States, Director of Genetic Advancement with STgenetics. His topic of discussion was increasing the speed and improvements of the Brown Swiss breed. Kendall encouraged Brown Swiss breeders to become more involved with IVF breeding. He mentioned concern that over the years the Brown Swiss calving interval has increased. Although some may not agree with him, he believes inbreeding is not a problem in the Brown Swiss breed. Comparing Holsteins to Brown Swiss, Brown Swiss have little to no inbreeding to date. Once again, he encourages breeders to start genomic testing young heifers and bulls to find that ‘diamond in the rough’ and expand use of sexed semen within the breed.
Dr. Reiner Emmerling of Germany, Senior Geneticist at the Institute of Animal Breeding, Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture, spoke about the improvement of genetic evaluation systems. The systems he talked about today were the single-step evaluation and two-step evaluation. Single-Step evaluation involves increasing the number of genotyped females. Doing this, will help give more of a bigger picture of all genetics and genetic possibilities. If they had more females genotyped along with males the information that can come out of it would help with more understanding of both sires and dams. He also touched on the ideas of intergenomics and how that can be helpful within genotyping.
Following Dr. Emmerling was Franz Seefried of Switzerland, Senior Geneticist at Qualitas AG. Qualitas AG is the national evaluation center of IT and Quantitative Animal Genetics for Swiss livestock. His focuses were on SWISScow genomic improvements. Along with in-depth qualities and the Forward and Reverse Approach. Forward Approach is when looking at Forward phenotype, whole-sequencing, and then finding the cause. Reverse Approach is looking at population-wide validation, candidate variant identification, whole-genomic sequencing along with SNP data. Both approaches are needed.
Next was Urs Shuler of Switzerland who is also a geneticist with Qualitas AG and is in charge of R&D activities on animal health-related topics and operations of genetic evaluations. He highlighted how they have been trying to reduce ketosis and find resistance. They are doing so by looking at DMI, year, dates, and zone, they are trying to find hotspots. He also spoke about reducing the mortality rate of calves.
Rounding out the morning session was João Durr, CEO of CDCB, Vice-President of ICAR. Originally from Brazil, Joao has served many different positions, one of them being Executive Director of the InterBull Centre in Sweden. Durr highlighted Disease Resistance Evaluations for Brown Swiss. This is research that he and his colleagues have been putting together for a few years now. The different diseases they have been looking into are milk fever, displaced abomasum, ketosis, mastitis, metritis, and retained placenta. These health traits have a 1.9% weight on NM$ and have correlations with higher-weight traits. Currently, CDCB has 65,000 Brown Swiss genotypes. There are different gene pools by country.
Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) Secretary Randy Romanski. Secretary Romanski highlighted the different grants that DATCP provides to Wisconsin dairy farmers and producers. He also shared some Wisconsin-specific information. “Agriculture is the largest contributor to the Wisconsin economy. Agriculture and the Dairy industry are our (Wisconsin’s) strengths. 90% of Wisconsin milk is made into cheese, and 90% of that cheese is exported out of the state,” said Secretary Romanski. One of the grants provided by DATCP is the Dairy Processor Grant which has been available since 2014. This program is continuing to grow and makes sure Wisconsin Cheesemakers stay at the top of their game and keep Wisconsin America’s Dairyland. He invited everyone who goes to World Dairy Expo to stop at the DATCP booth and learn more about the Wisconsin Farm Center and what it has to offer, and also to watch for Alice in Dairyland delivering the Supreme Champion envelope on the colored shavings.
During lunch, Aurore Grave Cannesson, BGS France and Assistant of the European Brown Swiss Federation secretary, gave a presentation about the More Than Milk logo and promotion being used by the European Brown Swiss associations. The main logo is individualized for each country with their national flag.
The afternoon sessions the 2022 World Brown Swiss Conference began with Franciska von Fedak of El Vergel Farm in Columbia, she is a breeder of Brown Swiss in both Columbia and Venezuela. Speaking on the topic of Brown Swiss and crossbreeding in Columbia and Latin America. There is all-year grazing in Latin America. AI is not generally used. Since the climate in Latin America is very different from North America, not all animals can live in that climate and different altitudes. They have tried different breeds, but the one that thrives the best is the Brown Swiss with their strength, strong feet and legs and hooves, and dark pigment. Crossbreeding using Brown Swiss sires improves fertility, milk quality and quantity, functional udders, and hybrid vigor. She also touched on how they are sustainably dairy farming in Latin America using silvo pastoral system to reclaim land.
Next up, Enrico Santus, Director of ANARB in Italy, is also the President of Synergy, a newborn service association providing technical support to 15 populations of cattle and even horses and buffalos in Italy. He talked about the topic of dairy cows’ resistance to heat. This went hand-in-hand with Franciska von Fedak’s speech. He showed graphs on how Brown Swiss compared to the Holstein cow in withstanding different climates. There are visible and hidden effects of heat stress: production decrease, less quality, less cheese yield, reproductive issues if high THI – temperature humidity Index threshold and the difference between temporary and sustained THI threshold over several days. Holstein threshold is 72F, have higher body temperature increase and affected by sharp decline. Brown Swiss threshold is higher, body temperature doesn’t increase as much, and when affected has a gradual decline. Younger cows suffer more heat stress than older cows. . BS have less value loss vs. Holsteins in the same environment.
Speaking next was Kevin Ziemba of the United States spoke, he is the Eastern Region Manager and part of the Genetic Development Team for STgenetics. Ziemba talked about the strategies to expand the benefits of Brown Swiss genetics through crossbreeding. He spoke about crossing Brown Swiss with Holstein, Angus, and Jersey. He gave examples of how crossbreeding has been done and what has come out of crossbreeding Holsteins and Angus. BS frame size contributes to salvage value. He also gave an example of crossbreeding Brown Swiss and Holstein which increased mobility and hoof health, optimized productive life, and decreased dry matter intake. BS have 80% B/B Kappa Casein and 70% A2/A2. Only 2% are A1/A1. What if heterosis isn’t a constant? Look at what each breed brings to the table. BS has an advantage. Not by random crossing, but rather cross using intentional selection to maximize the advantages of the different breeds. Choose to cross with genetic progress in mind. This adds a huge dynamic to crossbreeding.
Breeder Panel
The breeder panel was started by Clément Sevin of France. He currently owns an 80-head Brown Swiss herd and has a strong passion for genealogy and animal genetics. On his home farm, they do some crossbreeding along with pure breeding. One-third of his BS herd was obtained through crossbreeding. He also shared how crossbreeding has affected his family and what the benefits he has experienced have been.
Tanner Mashek of the United States is a 7th generation farmer on his family farm Hilltop Acres Farm. Hilltop Acres has 450 head on 1,000 acres of land. He talked to the attendees about how his family farm works from the genetic standpoint. He highlighted how they breed, manage the farm, and why they chose the Brown Swiss breed. All of their milk is made into cheese.
Jonny Lockhead of Scotland is currently milking 100 head on 300 acres at Kedar Brown Swiss. The family farm is completely organic and allows their cows to graze in southern Scotland. The family also bottles and sells their own milk and cheese. He put emphasis on their breeding goal, which is longevity, yield, type, functionality, and marketability. 90% of milk goes to cheese coop, rest sold as fluid milk.
Joe Loehr of the United States owns Loehr Dairy LLC. The farm is 4th-generation family owned by Joe and his brother Mark. He and his family are milking 500 head, which is made up of Holsteins and Brown Swiss. He spoke on Brown Swiss’ profitability in a commercial dairy compared to Holsteins, purebred Brown Swiss and crossbred Brown Swiss/Holsteins. He said Brown Swiss make Holsteins better. Where is the BS breed going? We need to breed to keep the strength and profitability of our Brown Swiss breed, profit is more important than show type. All of their milk is made into cheese.
Josef Müller of Germany milks 100 head of Brown Swiss on his family farm. He has also built his business on renewable energies and real estate. He presented how he is financially paying off the farm and how he started out buying it from his family. All of their milk is made into cheese.
To close out the weekend of farm trips and conference meetings, Dr. Jack Britt of the United States was the keynote speaker at the evening gala. He has recruited and led an international team that is not focused on farming in today’s world, but rather 50 years in the future. Dr. Britt spoke on the ideas of change in population, new ways of income, new ideas and ways of farming, and different research projects. He continues to focus on the fact that the population is increasing over time and how it will affect farming. He also went back to highlight the topic of epigenetics and how heat stress had affected the calf and cow before and after birth. There is no doubt that the world around us is changing, along with the farming industry, but over time we have been growing with the growth of the world.
DAYS 4 & 5
Tuesday afternoon, October 4th, saw the start of the International Brown Swiss Show as Official Judge Gerrit DeBruin from Lake Mills, Wisconsin, and Associate Judge Hayden Hauschildt from Ellsworth, Wisconsin, placed the heifers. Earning Junior Champion honors was the winning Summer Yearling Heifer, Random Luck Total Perfection owned by Jacob Harbaugh and Matthew Thompson, Marion, Wisconsin. Earning Reserve Junior Champion honors was the winning Spring Yearling Heifer Pit-Crew Daredevil Kyla ET owned by Pit-Crew Genetics, Cambridge, Minnesota.
Wednesday, October 5th, cows and group classes were in the ring. After Judges DeBruin and Hauschildt evaluated a show consisting of 390 head, earning Grand Champion honors was the winning Aged Cow Cutting Edge Thunder Faye owned by Ken Main and Kenny Joe Manion, Copake, New York. Earning Reserve Grand Champion honors was the winning Senior Three-Year-Old Cow Robland Norwin Bermuda ET owned by Tony Kohls and Goldfawn Farm, McGregor, Texas.
Also held October 5th was the World Premier Brown Swiss Sale. 33 lots produced a sale average of $7,995 with a top seller of $28,000.