In this final thesis a study about welfare indicators in the Swedish milk production has been carried out. The system Swedish Animal Welfare Monitoring Scheme developed by the Swedish Dairy Association has been used as a base and the EU project WELFARE QUALITY® has also been used as a source of information. Focus groups have been used as a qualitative investigating method. This included four focus groups, two with farm auditors from the two different dairies and two with dairy farmers. This method was chosen because in this way one can study how a conversation about a given subject takes form in a respectable way.

The Swedish consumption of lamb a increasing, and today we yearly eat a kilo of lamb per person each year. As a consequence the Swedish degree of self production according to lamb is steadily decreasing, and is today about 39 %.Today Swedish Meats is now cooperating with the Swedish lamb breeders organisation to raise that percentage. At the same time the European Union presents a new agricultural reform, the MTR (Mid Term Review). The shape of this new reform is not yet fully known, but the general policy has been more or less outlined. The new reform is split into three propositions: the farm model, the regional model and the mixed model.

During an investigation of animal welfare in animal production, the focus has for a long time been focused on the absence of stress, suffering and injuries, and positive emotions have not been prioritized. However, in recent years that has been drastically changed. The public interest have increased for buying animal products from animals that have had a decent life, which have led to that play, exploratory behavior and other positive behaviours has come to play a significant role in welfare assessment. The welfare of cattle is difficult to assess since there is currently no ancestors to study, it is thus difficult to determine which behaviors can be regarded as natural and thus positively related, acordingly the welfare of cattle have been forgotten and research on positive emotions of cattle have not been prioritized. The aim of this study was to observe which behavior growing cattle performe, and if there was any differences of which kind of behavior that was observed, if the cattle is keept on slatted floor or on a deep straw bedding. Furthermore, antoher purpose was to investigate if the observed behaviours indicate a positive, negative or natural welfare, and if it is possible to use the observed behaviours in a welfare assessment.

Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas (GHG) that contributes to the global warming. One of the largest sources of methane is livestock, preferably ruminants which alone counted for 30% of the total agricultural anthropogenic methane emissions in the year of 2000. The reason to why ruminants are such large contributors of methane are that the gas is produced in the rumen by enteric formation and leaves the animals by belching, exhaling or by the excreta.Diets high in concentrates can result in a lower emission of methane. Also diets with a high content of starch, such as alfalfa-grass, have a methane-decreasing. It is profitable to reduce enteric methane formation since that form of methane is unavoidably lost.

The quality of health and care of our animals in the veterinary clinic is dependent on the veterinary nurse. Therefore it is important that the nurse has a good mental health and can provide this. Research shows that veterinarians are exposed to an elevated risk of suicide, moral stress, depression and anxiety. One of the factors contributing is believed to be exposure to euthanasia. The impact of euthanasia to veterinary nurses is yet unclear, as research focuses on veterinarians.

Light has always fascinated humans but ever since the invention of the first light bulb, the use of artificial lighting has accelerated dramatically. Darkness has never been as rare as today and the overuse of lighting has created a new phenomenon called light pollution. Most living beings are biologically dependent on the recurrent twenty-four-hour rhythm of light and darkness, called the circadian cycle. Human beings are evolutionary developed after this circadian rhythm and the effects of constant artificial light is yet unknown. Scientists fear the consequences of constant lighting and what it means physically, mentally and philosophically for the human species.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the similarities and differences between best practice literature regarding digitization and an existing cultural heritage digitization project. It also aims to determine whether this literature is of any help during an actual project of digitization. These results were achieved by examining literature regarding best practices in digitization and analyzing how well an actual project correlates to this advice. The information about the Digidaily project was obtained through two qualitative interviews as well as the project blog. The outcome of our research showed that although there are a great many similarities between theory and practice, the project in question was not helped by literature.

The aim of this paper was to study incoming complaints to The County Administrative Board in Västra Götaland during 2011 and examine if it was possible to see a connection between warranted and unwarranted complaints and informer, animal species and type of inadequate. In Västra Götaland, a complaint is classified as warranted if the inspection leads to a reprimand, whether it regards what was reported or not. Data were collected during three weeks through The County Administrative Board´s record system Platina and a total of 456 complaints were studied. The parameter ?complainant? was categorized into four groups according to The County Administrative Boards own division; public with the subgroups anonymous and non-anonymous, animal health staff and others.

Research concerning movement patterns of wild animals has been advancing since GPS technology arrived. But studying the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is still difficult because of the harsh territory it inhabits in Central Asia. This study took place in south Gobi, Mongolia, and aimed to estimate the time spent at kills and the maximum distance away from kills between visits. Snow leopards were monitored with GPS collars that took a location every five or seven hours. Potential kill sites were established by identifying clusters of GPS-locations in ArcGIS and visited in the field for confirmation.

This B.Sc. Thesis examines how Swedish Large Cap companies communicate CSR in social media. We describe the current state of CSR communication in four different social media channels, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and blogs. This research, supported by interviews with stakeholders and a quantitative survey, analyses the potential risks and benefits from communicating CSR via social media and provides concrete advice on the development of a CSR communication strategy for social media. Although some benefits have been realized, many companies have failed to truly reap the potential benefits from an effective social media strategy for CSR.

Concentration of protein in bovine milk is one of the most significant milk quality parameters, to a large extent determining the price for milk to the producer. Mastitis is a common disease among dairy cows, negatively affecting not only milk yield but also milk protein composition. Milk from mastitic cows tends to have lower cheese yield, negatively affected processability properties and sensory quality, due to changed protein quality and composition. Poorer milk protein quality would have an economically negative impact on dairy industry. Only few studies have investigated the short term effects of mastitis on milk protein composition.

Migration is a worldwide phenomenon that has occurred for thousands of years in a vast variety of species. The general knowledge of migrating animals is poor even though billions of animals from a range of different groups migrate every year. The human impact on migrating ungulates is high and many populations are declining globally due to direct and indirect causes. Hence it becomes vital to study the migration phase and the habitat and resources selected during migration. The objective with this study was to identify the habitat characteristics and resource selection of moose during migration and compare the selection between different seasons and utilization distribution (relative frequency distribution for the points of location of an animal over a period of time) categories.

The virus-mediated disease Rift Valley fever (RVF) was discovered during an outbreak in Kenya in the 1930s. Since then it has spread to most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, and in the last decades several outbreaks have caused economic and health issues in Africa, Yemen and Saudi-Arabia. The disease mainly affects domestic livestock, causing abortions, but is also a zoonosis. To be able to control the spread of the disease it is important with surveillance for better knowledge about the distribution and virus circulation even in inter-epidemic/epizootic periods. The human population is growing, and people and their livestock constantly move closer to areas with wild animals which act as reservoirs for different viruses. Also, humans and their animals often get within reach for arthropod vectors, hosting or carrying viruses.

The aim of the study was to support the ongoing kaizen work at a medical centre. Two main topics have been addressed in this study:? Find a solution to ensure that the kaizen decisions are followed and will get a strong grip in the organisation.? Support the kaizen process by giving advice on how to structure the meetingsand how the kaizen work could be done more effectively.The study started with a visit to the medical centre to observe the kaizen process and the attitudes among the employees. The employees were asked to fill in a survey about the kaizen work at the centre. The final recommendations given have been based on this and also information gathered from other medical centres which work after the same kaizen principles.

Africa is expected to go through a rapid urbanization over the next four decades and the demand for food is increasing in the rapidly growing urban and peri-urban (UPU) areas. Keeping livestock in urban areas is in particular associated with health hazards. This is due to close interaction between humans and animals, and it has been shown that zoonotic diseases are increasing in urban areas. The benefits of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) are related to improved food security, in particular among low-income groups. Apart from the negative public health impact of zoonotic diseases, animal disease could have a devastating impact on the economy and food security of many households in these areas. In the present study, three important endemic diseases, including brucellosis, salmonellosis and Bovine viral diarrhea (BVD), were analyzed in regard to seroprevalence and risk factors.