[4]: 66 In the latter part of the nineteenth century cattle of this type were exported to the United States, where they were selectively bred for dairy qualities only, and developed into a distinct breed, the American Brown Swiss.

[3]: 307 The Braunvieh derives from the grey-brown mountain cattle raised from mediaeval times in the Swiss canton of Schwyz in Central Switzerland.

[8] Between 1967 and 1998 there was substantial cross-breeding with the American Brown Swiss with the aim of improving milk yield, physical size, and udder conformation.

[12] The Braunvieh has given rise to several European cattle breeds in the Alpine region, in Austria, in Germany, in Italy and in Spain, as well as the Brown Swiss in the United States.

Braunvieh were imported from central Switzerland from the sixteenth century, and diffused from the Alpine valleys into the flat country of Lombardy and the Veneto – where they rapidly supplanted the mostly red-coated local breeds – and then further south as far as Calabria.

[14]: 10 Braunvieh exported to the United States from about 1870 were bred exclusively for milk production, and developed into the modern American Brown Swiss.