FOR AS LONG AS HE HAS been practicing, Bruce Beachnau (’67) has been trying to convince dairy farmers not to starve their cows. More than 40 years later, his work is not done. That is the reason he and his wife created the Dr. Bruce and Diane Beachnau Endowment for Proficiency in Dairy Medicine, Performance, and Heifer Raising.

The Beachnaus have been giving to the College of Veterinary Medicine and to the Spartan Fund for a number of years, but an endowment makes possible a contribution focused on the particular issue that is most important to the couple—the health and nutrition of calves.

Early in his career, Beachnau found himself responding to a lot of calls about dying calves. Farmer after farmer would say his calf was fine one night and dead the next morning. It was a widespread and persistent problem that was not understood at that time.

By the mid-1970s Beachnau decided to raise some calves himself so he could determine what exactly was happening on these farms. He found that this relatively new problem accompanied the shift to larger dairy operations, where calves were purchased and shipped in large groups instead of being born and raised on the farm. Many of these calves would develop diarrhea and many starved to death.

Beachnau found that the calves needed more than twice as much milk replacer than was the standard. He also changed the milk replacer to one with almost twice as much fat and protein.

“It takes two weeks for a calf to burn off all its baby fat,” explains Beachnau. “So they’d be burning off that fat during the weeks they were being underfed.”

Beachnau has a long string of stories about his experiences trying to convince dairy farmers to feed their calves more. The problem was a commonly held and false understanding among dairymen that you could kill a calf by overfeeding them much more quickly than by underfeeding.

“I told one farmer he wasn’t feeding his calves enough,” recalls Beachnau. “He asked me if I was accusing him of starving his calves. I told him I was trying to put it nicely.” Beachnau’s skeptical client had MSU conduct diagnostic work, and the results backed Beachnau up. The man’s calves were emaciated.

Taking classroom knowledge and diagnostic skills into the field

CONFIDENCE IN HIS ABILITIES, an understanding that he would never quit learning, and strong diagnostic skills—these are some of the most important things Beachnau took with him when he graduated from MSU.

“I give credit for my diagnostic skills to my training in the MSU diagnostic lab. When we didn’t have animals for necropsies, we’d look at slide after slide after slide of animals that had come in and the history behind them, and then we would diagnose what the disease was.”

Careful examination and diagnostic skills were critical to Beachnau’s practice—most of his clients at that time were not willing to spend money on advanced diagnostics. Refined observational skills and confidence in his abilities were what Beachnau needed to solve the particular problem of the dying calves.

Beachnau also found that proper nutrition and hygiene were critical to preventing and treating infections like salmonella. He was able to cure salmonellosis by increasing nutrients while administering antibiotics; unless the calves have adequate energy, their immune systems cannot take advantage of vaccines.

He treated undernourished calves and heifers in private practice in Michigan and, when he went to work for Upjohn (later Pfizer) on the East Coast, he called on many dairy operations where the health and nutrition of the young calves and heifers were neglected. The result was that these animals were under-nourished from birth to weaning.

While Beachnau worked for Upjohn (and then Pfizer), the Beachnaus lived in New York from 1980 to 1997, when he made Michigan home base for his travels for the company. He retired from Pfizer in 1998.

The importance of hands-on experience

THE BEACHNAUS BEGAN THEIR GIVING to the College and the Spartan Fund after they returned to Michigan. But long before their financial contributions to the College, they actively contributed to veterinary education at MSU by taking students in for preceptorships, in which a practicing veterinarian provides personal instruction, training, and supervision to a veterinary student.

“When we returned to Michigan we began giving to the College and to the Spartan Fund,” says Beachnau. “We’d been making annual gifts for a while, and then one day we saw some information about endowments and Diane suggested we give an endowment—so we did.”

The Beachnaus created an endowment specifically for training students to raise healthy calves and heifers.

“For 40 years veterinarians have been avoiding taking an active role in keeping these calves from starving,” says Beachnau. “They let the farmers say they don’t want their heifers to get too fat or that they can’t afford the nutrition.”

“My reason for doing this is to make sure the students now are confident enough to tell the old-time practitioners that this is how we should be doing things. This is how we should be feeding the calves. What we want is no more dairy heifer calves to be starving 40 years from now.”

Posted: December 2013