Cattle production systems are changing to bigger intensified systems with larger numbers of animals per farm and more free range systems while at the same time employing fewer people. Aversive handling has been known to affect cattle production negatively for many years, but lately scientists have started to focus more on what positive effects gentle handling and positive human-cattle interactions may have on beef and dairy production. Fear can cause high stress in production animals and this can contribute to not only reduced production within beef and dairy cattle, but also increased risks for accidents and decreased animal welfare. Therefore, by reducing the fear cattle experience of humans, it could be possible to increase production, decrease accidents and increase the welfare of the animals. Reducing the animals fear and stress can be done by simple means, such as walking and talking calmly around the cattle, associating humans to positive feelings (such as feed) and stroking the cattle?s body regions associated with social grooming.

A fauna passage is a way for animals to cross roads separated from the traffic. In Sweden, there are an unknown number of passages with different functions and appearances. These passages would, with the question ?Which fauna passages can be found in Sweden, and how well do they work?? as a base, be compiled in a comparable way. This would be done with a number of questions asked to the different regions of Vägverket.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine which factors influence librarians selection of electronic information sources, and to investigate whether librarians use of search strategies and search tactics changes depending on which information source they use. The electronic information sources are: online databases, Online Public Access Catalogues OPAC, World Wide Web, and CD-ROM databases. The theoretical framework is based on step 3 Select a source and step 4 Formulate a Query in Marchioninis information seeking model. The search strategies are divided into two categories: analytical and browsing strategies. In order to supplement the theoretical framework with empirical facts, 8 librarians were interviewed.

This essay describes and compares the extensive reindeer management to the more intensive, but grazing based, sheep management system in Sweden. Differences and similarities between the two production systems will be investigated by elucidating the economy, land use and possibilities to influence production and economy through breeding, feeding and product development. The reindeer management area covers the northern part of Sweden whilst the sheep management is dispersed over the country. Both reindeer and sheep are ruminants and have relatively high demands on the quality and digestibility of the feed however reindeers graze on mountain-and forest lands whilst sheep often graze inaccessible areas or cultivated grasslands. Selection intensity is generally lower in the reindeer management compared to the intensity in sheep breeding.

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.

Today, many veterinary hospitals offer rehabilitation as a service. We think that this is an interesting subject and therefore we want to find out what rehabilitation methods that are available in Sweden for dogs and horses. We want to give animal nurses and other persons who have animals as an occupation an survey that shortly describes how the methods are performed, what physical effect they have in the body and to give examples in what conditions they are used. To find out what rehabilitation methods that are available we sent out two different questionnaires, one to hospitals/clinics for small animals and one to hospitals/clinics for horses and other companies that works with rehabilitation of horses. The information about the methods described in our project we have found in literature and on the Internet.

Psittacines and reptiles are exotic animals that are difficult to care for and it requires extra knowledge to make a correct assessment of their wellbeing. An animal welfare inspector, with an education in general animal welfare, may not have a deep enough knowledge of exotic animals to do a proper assessment of the animal?s general condition and its environment. In this paper it was therefore examined if animal welfare inspectors have enough knowledge to do a satisfying inspection of establishments working with selling of exotic animals. A literature study was used to examine difficulties with each species.

The traditional Swedish way of dealing with browsing damages made by moose, is to reduce the moose population. However, a growing way of dealing with damages made by several ungulate species, including wild boars in particular is to redistribute them with supplementary food sources. Attracting them to settle in habitats less vulnerable to damages made during foraging. This study we tracked collared moose in southern Sweden from January throughout April in the year of 2009. From the tracking data their ?favourite? positions was selected and visited in order to study the features that attracts moose during winter.

The aim of this paper was to investigate whether or not it is possible to keep bottlenose dolphins and killer whales in captivity while maintaining good animal welfare. Today, many zoos and aquariums claim that their primary function is to conserve species and educate people about conservation and threatened species. The keeping of wild animals is justified by conservation programs and by the information spread to the zoo visitors. This does however not seem to be the case for marine mammals such as bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.) and killer whales (Oricnus orca) since these species are not threatened in the wild and neither of them are listed as threatened in IUCN's Red List. Bottlenose dolphins and killer whales are entirely aquatic carnivores and are distributed in all coastal and pelagic waters from the Arctic ice in the north to the Antarctic ice in the south.

The obesity problem in the world is growing bigger and today even our companion animals are becoming heavier. In this paper the importance of a balanced diet for the companion animal is emphasised. There are many disadvantages for the animal and for the owner if the animal becomes obese and it is important to stress the facts on what the consequences might be. There are several medical conditions connected to obesity and a short summary of these will be discussed. It is often easier to prevent obesity rather than loosing the overweight and some ideas of how to do this is looked in to. In many veterinary clinics today, the veterinary nurse is the first and sometimes the only person to see the animal.

Many farms in the counties in the south of Sweden have difficulties with diseases spread by ticks; mainly babesiosis and tick-borne fever (TBF) but there are indications that borreliosis ought to be included. All of the tick-borne diseases radically decrease farm profit if the herd is affected. The production of the vaccine used against babesiosis since the 1920´s, will be discontinued in the near future and in addition to economical reasons it is therefore important to learn more about the diseases above. During the summer and fall of 2002 and 2003, a farm in the island of Gotland was burdened with unusually many cases of bovine babesiosis. In total 43 animals fell ill and one died.

West Pokot County is located in North Western part of Kenya where the previous lifestyle was nomadic pastoralism. However, in recent years the semi-arid county has been under dramatic developments and a sedentary agro-pastoral lifestyle is now growing. This is a major change in production systems and there is a big knowledge gap especially for the livestock based agro-pastoral systems. The main objective of this study was to investigate the current situation of animal husbandry in West Pokot. Twenty farmers were interviewed in Chepareria Division, using semi-structured interviews to investigate if the use of enclosures have had any effect on animal husbandry in West Pokot and if so, how have this method affected the animal husbandry? The results of the study indicated that there is a difference in animal husbandry between farms using enclosures and farms not using enclosures.

Roads and railroads have significant impact on the surrounding landscape and the wildlife living in it. This study aims to provide an overview of the effects caused by railways to reindeer, roe deer and moose in Sweden in order to make more detailed assessments within this topic in the future. The method used is a study of literature on the subject and a synthesis of databases with information about wildlife mortalities, traffic intensity and fences in the study area; northern and central Sweden. The databases were used to compile digital maps using ArcGIS. Infrastructure brings change to the surrounding landscape and its function as habitat for wildlife. Railroads cause barrier effects such as fragmentation, wildlife mortality, loss of habitat and loss of connectivity.

Total mixed rations (TMR) and TMR complemented with individual grain feeding to dairy cows are a growing practice in Sweden. This is because the heard sizes of the farms are increasing. Some farmers and farm advisors in Sweden have great knowledge and practical experience of working with TMR. In the same time there are many advisors that do not know how to handle TMR and farms that have a group based feeding of their animals. In this MSc thesis, the knowledge of farmers that use TMR and advisors with lots of experience of TMR are gathered, with the aim to create a guide book for advisors that are about to start or just have started working with TMR.

Animals in zoos live in small enclosed areas. If a pathogen is introduced to the zoo, the animals are extremely vulnerable. The highest risk of introducing new pathogens occurs when new animals are introduced to the collection. Therefore it is essential that zoos have a protocol in place for disease prevention. This review has studied literature on the subject of disease prevention protocols when translocating animals between zoos.