The purpose with the study was to find a pattern in the behaviour of dairy cows which could be related to their social rank. A behavioural study was conducted at the University Cattle Research Centre (Kungsängen) in Uppsala, Sweden. The study included 12 lactating dairy cows, 6 high ranked and 6 low ranked. The cows were housed in a loose housing barn with an automatic milking system (AMS) to which they had access 24 hours a day. During the experiment the total number of cows in the barn was 46.

To have a forest area close to the city is of great importance for the city population?s well being. Children develop their motor skills, concentration and imagina-tion and the adults have a place to shake of the stress from work. Forest areas are used to exercise at, play in and to find a moment of peace and silence. The urban forest and the old farming pastures at Markussonvallen and Per-Isakssonvallen already has natural assets worth to preserve and a great potential to create more. The goal is to develop a forest with a variation of tree species and ground vegetation that will appeal to the human senses and different animal species such as birds, insects etc.

Conjunctival swabs from 12 cats in a Swedish animal shelter were analyzed by real-time PCR for FHV-1, Mycoplasma felis and chlamydiae. The purpose of this study was to see whether and to what extent these agents can be detected and if they were detected from cats housed in quarantine or in the adoption department. Samples were first taken upon arrival at the quarantine and then a second sample was taken two weeks after moving to the adoption department, or upon presentation of signs of disease. The cats spent the quarantine period in two separate quarantines: five in a new quarantine (quarantine A) and seven in a room in the old shelter (quarantine B). The difference between these quarantines was that in B the cats were often mixed together ant the hygiene routines were not as good as in quarantine A.

Bedövning eller inte vid rituell slakt är en ständigt aktuell fråga, vars lagstiftning och regler skiljer sig mellan olika länder och religiösa grupper. Syftet med denna litteraturstudie är att med utgångspunkt från djurets lidande utreda vilken rituell slaktmetod som ger högst djurvälfärd; slakt utan bedövning eller slakt med bultbedövning, elektrisk head-only-bedövning eller post-cut stunning. Tillvägagångssätten skiljer sig mycket mellan och inom de olika slaktmetoderna, och innefattar alla eller några av de kritiska punkterna; fixeringen, själva bedövningen, snittet samt tiden mellan snitt alternativt bedövning och förlorande av medvetandet. Fixering kan orsaka djuret lidande i form av stress eller rädsla, varför en så kort fixeringstid som möjligt med djuret i upprätt position är att föredra ur djurvälfärdssynpunkt vid såväl bedövad som obedövad slakt. Vid bedövning är det viktigt att utrustningen är i gott skick och slaktaren kompetent för att inte utsätta djuret för onödigt lidande.

Rabies kills about 55 000 people every year and more than 90% of infected humans are considered getting the disease from dog-bites. To control the disease and eventually eliminate human rabies, the most efficient and economic method is to keep the dog population vaccinated. The objective of this thesis was to evaluate the situation of canine rabies in two urban areas in Lilongwe, Malawi, where canine rabies is enzootic. In each area 200 household-interviews were conducted in September and October 2013. Focal points were awareness of the disease, human incidence as well as vaccination coverage in the dog population.

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.

A Biogas plant in SLU?s (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) management sustains to behave in con-nection with the new animal stables at Lövsta. There will primarily manure from stables that rot to biogas. The biogas plant will also have the capacity that rot others substrates that can arise in the farm operation. The aim with the biogas plant is to produce non fossil electrical and gas heat for own customs, to reduce smell impact from stables and to make possible different types of research investments within the area.This study has implemented multiple cases study of different investment scenarios.

For the company to work well, it is necessary with a good economy, a high qualitative production and a well working system concerning the environment: the whole cycle on the farm needs to be working. At the same time, debaters about the environmental impacts are also requiring higher demands for the dairy farmers and therefore also the management programs. Management programs for feed evaluation calculations have been more developed over the years. Big amounts have been invested in the new feeding system with NorFor, but no one seems to have asked the dairy farmers what they themselves want to spend their money on, and what they need help with. For the dairy farmers it is necessary that the whole company is controlled in the right way, and much more than just feed evaluation is included in this.

Feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) is a disease that can affect cats and is caused by a feline coronavirus (FCoV). FCoV is spread via the feacal-oral route and many cats are carriers of the virus. Despite that, very few of the carrier cats develop FIP. The explanation of this phenomenon is that the virus has to mutate to be able to cause FIP and in the majority of the carrier cats this mutation never occurs. FIP is very hard to diagnose because the symptoms are diffuse and a completely accurate diagnosis can almost exclusively be established during a postmortem necropsy.

This master?s thesis was performed during the fall of 2006 at Cloetta Fazer AB in Ljungsbro. Cloetta Fazer is the market leader in Scandinavia of manufacturing confectionary and chocolates. The purpose of the project has been to identify causes that impact the quantity of waste in production as well as a cost/benefit analysis of the solutions that can reduce the problem of production waste.The work includes four production lines that are individually designed depending on what kind of product that are produced on the line. By using qualitative and quantitative methods such as focus groups, interviews and observations data has been collected.

Today the individual ventilated cage system (IVC-system) is a commonly used housing system for mice in research facilities. IVC systems have HEPA- filters and are designed to control both supply and exhausted air at cage level, as well as temperature and relative humidity in the cages. This creates an optimal environment for the mouse and at the same time a protection against the risk of cross-infection between cages and the outside environment. The aim of this study was to evaluate the health and welfare of breeding females and pups of two different strains of laboratory mice (NMRI nude mice and C57BL/6N) in three different kinds of IVC-systems; Arrowmight, Allentown and Tecniplast. The NMRI nude (Nu) females gave birth to 18 litters in Allentown, 16 litters in Arrowmight and 15 litters in Tecniplast.

Zambia is a country in Southern Africa where poverty is widespread and the traditional keeping of local poultry therefore plays a crucial role in improving nutrition. Meat and eggs from poultry are important sources of protein but also of income. Improving the poultry production is thereby a method to fight poverty. For poultry, the access to light is an important factor for both growth and egg production. In this paper, the focus is on the traditional village chickens used for both egg and meat production, how they are kept, their health and welfare and if the use of a solar lamp will influence their behaviour, growth and egg production. Three studies were conducted in Chibombo and Choma Districts in Zambia were 17 farmers were interviewed regarding the village chicken management of which six farmers participated in a solar lamp experiment.

Today, individual indoor stalls and individual outdoor paddocks are the most common way to house horses in Sweden. The way that we manage, house and feed the horses are not optimal for the species natural basic behavioural needs. However, the awareness of this grows in the context of research and the emergence of alternative housing systems. One of the alternatives to the traditional format in individual boxes is called group housing. Group housing systems allow horses to live in herds and they can choose how they want to distribute the hours of the day between movement, resting and foraging. The purpose of this study is to examine how frequently the young horses in a group housing system use the indoor lying area.

In 2012, about 1.3 million boars were surgically castrated, most of them without anaesthesia. Castration is performed to avoid the occurrence of boar taint and aggressive and sexual behaviour. There is a growing concern about the welfare of the piglets and the Swedish Board of Agriculture is working to find efficient and functional alternatives to castration without anaesthesia. The aim of this study was to obtain an overall picture of the latest research about the alternatives to castration without anaesthesia, with focus on vaccination against boar taint, and how they affect the welfare of the pigs. The alternative methods that are available today are surgical castration with anaesthesia and/or analgesia, rearing entire males and vaccination against boar taint.

Bees are of importance for the global food security. In Europe 84% and in the World 35% of all the agricultural crops are dependent of animal pollination (Winfree et al., 2011:1). In agricultural production there is a huge lack of pollinators (Azien & Harden, 2009). A problem that is widely spread. In Sweden the problem becomes clear when looking at the statistics of the number of bee colonies during the last 20 years, where it has been a decline with 63 % (Statistiska Centralbyrån & Jordbruksverket, 2011).