Brown Swiss

Brown Swiss are uniformly brown or greyish-brown, medium-sized, medium-weight, horned cattle. Bulls are usually darker than cows. The tips of the horns, lips and hooves are dark in colour, while the area around the lips and eyes is lighter. This breed is well muscled, even though its bone structure is relatively fine.

Breeding purpose

Brown Swiss cattle can be used as a fitness breed with a focus on milk production or as a dual-purpose breed. Thanks to its hard, black hooves and good fetlocks, as well as its adaptability to all production conditions, it can be kept successfully all over the world.

That’s why Brown Swiss cattle, being suitable for both pasture grazing and loose housing, can be found on both intensive and extensive farms.

The current breeding objective is made up of 50% milk, 5% meat and 45% fitness. The desired milk production performance level is ten times the body weight, with a close, high fat/protein ratio. Breeders increasingly focus on fitness traits such as fertility, calving ease, and length of productive life, independent of performance and lactation persistence.

Statistics

Region	Quantity
Worldwide
Europe
Austria	96.300 animals
Percentage of Brown Swiss in Austria	5,3% (27% of animals graze on mountain pastures)

Brown Swiss cattle are found across wide areas of the Alps and Alpine foothills. The main breeding areas are the Allgäu in Germany and the east of Switzerland.

Parameter	Value
Ø milk production	7.600 kg – 4,16% F – 3,50% E (305 Tage)
control farms (herds)	4.200
Sacrum height (cm, Ø)	147
Weight (kg, Ø)	700
Herdbook cows	37.700
Origin	Central Switzerland

History of the breed

Time	Event
600 years ago	The beginning of breeding in Central Switzerland The best-known breeding centre was Einsiedeln Abbey in the canton of Schwyz.
1870	First milk performance tests, export of animals to North America and breeding of larger animals with improved milk production (Brown Swiss)
Since the 1960s	Significant improvement in the foundation and milkability of European Brown Swiss cattle
2011	The genomically optimised breeding values for all Brown Swiss cattle have been official since 13 December.
2016	Breeding losses, new total breeding value
2021	Single-Step-Breeding value estimation

Breeding program

Further information on the breeding program and the breed can be found at: www.brownswiss-austria.at

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