Raising Brown Swiss Calves with Holly Tuman - ThrivingFarmer
Holly Tuman grew up on a small farm in Minnesota where her family milked 60 registered Brown Swiss cows. She loved showing cows and raising calves. After high school she went to the University of Minnesota and studied animal science with a dairy emphasis. After graduation she helped organize and start up a large dairy farm where she worked for a few years. She returned to the home farm after she was married to help her dad while he underwent knee surgery. In 2017 her father passed away. It was very tough, but for a while Holly farmed on her own. In 2020 she had the opportunity to move her family to Ohio.
When she moved to Ohio Holly sold most of her herd, but she took 10 special cows with her. They now milk 215 Brown Swiss and a few Holstiens. Including her son’s favorite red and white Holstein cows. Holly milks cows every day, raises 100+ calves per year, and overseas all the newborn calves and feeds all the calves on her farm. She has a few college kids that help feed calves and heifers in the evenings, and she participates in herd check and daily chores.
Holy has a few thoughts to share with us concerning her experiences raising calves!
Q: What have been some of your biggest challenges raising calves?
A: “Biggest challenge? Well, Brown Swiss cattle are a challenge in themselves! One big challenge with Brown Swiss calves is getting them to eat right away. It seems like Holsteins will suck down their first meal, but it’s a lot harder to get Brown Swiss calves to eat right away. I have found that if I give my Swiss calves a tube of Sync Paste as soon as possible after birth, they are more eager to eat when it is time for them to have colostrum.
I have a lot of people asking me what to do if a calf refuses to eat its first meal. I have found giving them an anti-inflammatory and some Selenium helps. A lot of times Swiss calves are born with an enlarged tongue, so the anti-inflammatory helps with that.
Any calves that are born with any degree of acidosis, giving them Sync Paste or drenching them with Surveillance really seems to help as well.”
Q: What are some of the most important aspects of your calf raising program?
A: “I don’t like sick calves. I want to find the perfect recipe for me to raise healthy calves. For me, the dry cow program is extremely important. We give fresh maternal colostrum directly to our calves, so I want to make sure that we are passing on the best immunity we can from the cow to the calf.
Clostridium is a big thing for Brown Swiss calves, so we always vaccinate for that. If we have scours or pneumonia for a period of time, then we get samples analyzed to find out what is causing the problem, and then we will cover that to our vaccination program as well.”
Q: What have been some of your biggest successes in calf raising?
A: “When a calf is born healthy, drinks well, and has perfect health through weaning, breeds right away, and calves in as a high producing milk cow that lives up to her genetic potential, I view that as success. All the Swiss that we have right now go back to my dad’s cow that I brought with me to Ohio. I remember showing her grandma at World Dairy Expo and its very sentimental to watch as each new generation is born and enters the milking herd.”
Q: How is gut health important personally to you?
A: “I think gut health is very interesting. In the last 6 years I have learned how the health of your gut microbiome affects your mood and your mental health. I remember when I was in my most depressed state and I realized that my gut health was terrible then. I don’t think people give it enough credit health wise when it comes to sickness or when you are mentally down. It all goes back to your gut health. I have learned how important it is to take care of myself every day so I can do the best that I can on the farm. I don’t get sick days, I don’t get days off, so gut health is very important to me personally.”
Q: Why is gut health important for your calves?
A: “I put gut health as a priority for our calves because I don’t like using antibiotics. I don’t want to be treating sick calves. If I can make that gut as awesome as it can be in those first few weeks, then that calf can take care of itself. My goal has always been to find the best products that help do that. I have tried many different gut-health and probiotic products; some I liked and aren’t available anymore. Others it seemed like I was still always treating scours and pneumonia.
Since starting Surveillance our calves are crazy now! They are more eager and aggressive. In the last few months, I have been weaning of the first group that we have fed Surveillance through all the way. When I first started using it, we just used Surveillance like a treatment. When I started putting it in the milk daily, I noticed the calves started eating more aggressively, they are growing so fast, and they look good. They are developing the way we want them to develop, especially for show calves.
It is so hard to get calves over pneumonia. Pneumonia for us was always a bigger issue than scours. It has been about a year since I have treated any calves with pneumonia now that we use Sync and Surveillance. I have had a few with a little cough, but I have nothing to treat with antibiotics.
In the long term, Hemorrhagic Bowel Syndrome is something Brown Swiss die from all the time. That’s something I want to prevent now, starting when they are calves. I don’t want them to die of a bloody gut in their third lactation, I hope that providing a good foundation for gut development will help prevent that!”
Thank you for all your thoughts on raising Brown Swiss calves Holly! If you would like to hear more from Holly you can follow her as ThrivingFarmer on Instagram or visit her Facebook profile! Holly is an advocate for gut health in both the human and cattle worlds. You can learn more about products she loves by exploring her Linktree.
Written by: Mariah Gull, M.S.