In Sweden, there has been a continuous increase in the volume of housing construction for dairy cattle. Since 2004, the number of new, rebuilt and extended dairy cow houses undergoing preliminary inspection by the authorities has grown. The livestock farms have mostly focused on cow units instead of calf and heifer sheds; which has led to a need for information in this area. The purpose of the study was to improve advisors? knowledge about bovine building construction and function; to enable them to provide more qualified advice to conventional and organic milk producers who sustain larger herds.

A severe profitability decline in sugar beet production in all of Europe is one of the consequences of the latest reform of the EU sugar regime. In south of Sweden, sugar beets is the crop that has been the most profitable by far for the last decade. The high profitability has contributed to the high rate of increase in the price of land and has restrained the structural change towards a more effective agriculture. Because of the reform, all sugar beet producers are facing diminishing income and must find ways to compensate this. The aim of this master thesis is to study how Swedish farmers adapt to the sugar beet reform. A questionnaire was sent to 354 randomly selected sugar beet producers.

A cattle producer that buys calves that are younger than six months to the herd should have a starter stable to prevent infection spreading in the herd. According to the Swedish animal welfare regulation there has to be a starter stable if more than 50 calves that are younger than four months are bought in yearly to the herd. The aim of the study was to improve the knowledge about bovine buildings and management of starter stables to obtain optimal weight gain and health of the calves. The hypothesis 1) The younger the calves are when purchased, the higher the calf mortality and 2) Purchasing calves from a high number of herds involves a higher risk of calf health problems and calf mortality were tested in the study. The objective of the study was to give advices by way of presenting ideal solutions of how a starter stable should be constructed and managed. A field study was done during June to September 2008 to collect knowledge and experience from existing starter stables.

The trend in milk production is similar in Sweden and across the world; the farms are getting fewer but increasingly bigger. The costs for hiring workers are increasing, which results in more cows per animal keeper. Sensors can then be a great tool for keeping track of animals which need special attention. With a reported decreasing fertility, sensors that can detect oestrus even at low levels can be especially helpful in bigger herds to pinpoint the cows that may be in oestrus. The number of farms with dairy cows that install AMS, Automatic Milking Systems, are increasing, and that also increases the need for sensors to control milk quality and composition when there is no visual control of the milk by a milker before milking starts.For the sensor data to be useful you have to have software designed to analyze and interpret the data to get relevant information that the farmer can use.

About 80 % of all Swedish dairy cows are kept in tie-stalls, but loose housing is increasing, probably because it is more profitable for the farmer. The design of the floors is of cruicial importance to the cows well-being. Traditionally, the most common type of floor in the alleys of a cubicle system still is a slatted manure-draining floor made of concrete. The typical Swedish design has 125-mm slats and 40-mm slots, maximally. With too wide slots, there is an increased risk of injuries to the claws when the cow makes a hasty move.

The abrupt and early weaning of intensively kept lambs may have serious animal welfare implications, but relatively little is known about this. Weaning includes the breaking of the mother-young bond and abrupt replacement of milk by solid food, often coinciding with changes in the (social) environment. Altogether, these changes are likely to affect lamb welfare significantly. This study aimed to establish how strong and persistent lamb welfare is impaired following abrupt weaning by means of measuring behaviour parameters indicative of affective state. Also, we investigated the existence of a diurnal rhythm in play behaviour, which is considered an important indicator of positive affect and good welfare.

This is a 20 credit Master thesis within the landscape architecture education at the Institute for Landscape Planning at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences at Alnarp. Norränga is situated on the fringe of the city of Lund, east of the existing district of Linero.The city planning office of Lund municipality has come up with a ?in-depth comprehensive plan? for the exploatation of the eastern area of Lund. The plan concerns an area of 1035 square kilometre which contains at least 1500 nya buildings, two schools, primaryschools, stores and bus station for local bus traffic and the new bus line - Lundalänken. The townplan is inspired from the historical Square block city with defined street system. The municipality has visions of what the green areas should consist of.

The dry period is usually 6-8 weeks and in this period the basis of the performance in the following lactation is settled. In an average herd about 15% of the cows are dry (Marcussen & Krog Laursen, 2008). In many herd the dry cows are set aside, that means setting aside 15% of your herd, at the time when they are preparing for their next lactation. The recommendation for number of groups differs depending on country traditions or reasons for grouping. If you look at recommendation for feeding, some companies selling feeding equipment advocates one group throughout the dry period, but the number differs from one to three.

Stureholm Manor and garden is a relatively young farming unit on clay soil in the north western part of Skåne, a province in Southern Sweden. Since the middle of the 19th century the landscape has been actively cultivated and has been transformed from oak forrest into farmingland of high efficiency. The industrial era during the 19th and 20th centuries meant new posssibilites for cultivation of these clay soils. With equipment like steam ploughs and the possibility to obtain fertilizers, the harvest increased considerably. This increased prosperity provided estate Stureholm with a beatuiful corps de logi, a manor. The trends prevailing in Europe around the turn of the century 1800-1900 against the growing industrialism, was turned into a artisan movement known as Arts and Craft. The Swedish followers idealized our Swedish history and they took the turn of a national romantic movement that later turned into neoclassicism.

The dry period is usually 6-8 weeks and in this period the basis of the performance in the following lactation is settled. In an average herd about 15% of the cows are dry (Marcussen & Krog Laursen, 2008). In many herd the dry cows are set aside, that means setting aside 15% of your herd, at the time when they are preparing for their next lactation. The recommendation for number of groups differs depending on country traditions or reasons for grouping. If you look at recommendation for feeding, some companies selling feeding equipment advocates one group throughout the dry period, but the number differs from one to three.

Parallellt med en stark tillväxt av lantbruket i EUs nya medlemsstater har, sedan halvtidsöversynen av den gemensamma jordbrukspolitiken, marknaden för insatsvaror stagnerat i Sverige. I Danmark kan skönjas en liknande utveckling bland annat genom en allt mer reglerad marknad för exempelvis handelsgödsel. Dessutom sker en kraftig strukturrationalisering hos tillverkarna av lantbruksförnödenheter. Den största aktören på den svenska marknaden för insatsvaror till lantbruket är Lantmännen ek för. Motsvarande aktör på den danska marknaden är Dansk Landbrugs Grovvaresellskab a.m.b.a (DLG). Båda företagen är kooperativt ägda av lantbrukare i respektive land.

This study is a value chain analysis for timber in East Africa. It was commissioned by Vi Agroforestry, a nongovernmental organisation registered in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania engaged in a rural development program that involves promoting tree planting and enterprise development (Vi Agroforestry, 2012). The purpose of the study was to identify and describe common value chains for timber in the countries where Vi Agroforestry operated. Value chain is a concept and a framework describing how to structure information regarding activities included in satisfying a certain customer need, e.g. procurement, logistics, transactions, production and marketing.

The purpose of this study was to examine the goals, possibilities and rationales that could be found in the discussions concerning the digging of ditches by governmental subsidiaries in order to drain the peat bogs of late nineteenth century Sweden. A further aim was to look at the effect on the landscape on a local level i.e. Släthults moss in Bäckaby parish, Småland in the south eastern part of Sweden. In order to be able to explain the connections between politics and landscape changes in a local population and its deciding bodies, influenced by ideas, science and production, a quadruple helix model developed from a triple helix model by Björn-Ola Linér was used. As a model of environmental history, three step thought was used, borrowed from Donald Worster.

A zoonosis is a disease or infection that is naturally transmitted between vertebrate animals and humans. The majority of infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonoses. Environments where wild animals, domestic animals and humans live in close proximity with no or small boundaries in the ecological system favor the transmission of diseases between animals and humans. The above described situation is more common in low income countries, where humans and animals live in high density and zoonoses are generally more common. The study was conducted in Cambodia.

Sammanfattning Ensilerat vallfoder är ett av de absolut viktigaste fodermedlen för att förmå korna att producera en stor mängd högkvalitativ mjölk. En hake är dock att ensilaget ska vara av god kvalitet och med bästa möjliga näringsvärde, samtidigt som man även vill ha volymmängder. För att få detta gäller det att skörda vid rätt tidpunkt, vilket kan vara svårt att veta när det infaller. Till detta finns ett hjälpmedel som kallas skördetidsprognos. Detta går ut på att man klipper prover i vallen upp till tre gånger innan första skörden för att analysera gräset och därigenom kunna avgöra när bästa tiden är för att skörda för att få den mest optimala kombinationen av mängd och näringsvärde. Syftet med detta arbete är att undersöka hur bra hjälpmedel jordbrukare i norra Sverige tycker att skördetidsprognosen är för att få en ökad kvalitet på ensilaget, samt att jämföra variationen i näringsvärde och mängd biomassa inom och mellan olika fält.