The Swedish dairy production today consists of big farms and different housing systems are in use. These systems put demands on the cows? ability to cope with the environment and one challenge is the claw health in the herds. Some claw lesions that are frequently observed are foot rot, hemorrhages, digital dermatitis and sole ulcers, which can be caused by, for example, the claws? environment and the flooring type used.

As for today, a large quantity of protein feeds is imported from other countries to be used in the Swedish dairy production. The main import is soya from Brazil. The soya-production in Brazil results in negative consequences for the natural environment in the area, and the long transport of the feeds requires a lot of energy. The organic dairy production in Sweden is, with the highest probability going to be forced to use 100 % organic feed to the cows in the year 2005, due to new EU-rules. These are some of the causes why there are reasons to look closer at the possibilities to feed Swedish cows with only Swedish feeds. In this study, I have looked at the KRAV-rules for organic feeding, where the goal is feeding with only KRAV-approved feeds.

Manure evaluation has been suggested as a cheap, fast and easy method which can give information about the digestibility of the ration, the function of the rumen, where in the gastrointestinal tract the feed is digested and the health of the cow. An experiment was conducted to study how manure evaluation could be used as a management tool in Swedish Dairy farming. Manure was collected from cows on Kungsängen Research Station and from 9 other farms. The manure samples were analysed for dry matter, ash, starch, pH-value and particle size (wet sieved). Also, the consistency of the manure was determined on a 5-point scale and the colour and smell were noticed. Penn State Forage Particle Separator was used for determining the particle size of the roughage.

The last years? financial situation has contributed to an increased willingness from the banks to handle risks. The most important risk to cope with is a risk that is related to a customer?s ability to repay loans. Forecasts indicate that in the future, Swedish farmers will be facing profitability challenges, which points to a need to reconsider the banks procedures considering risk management in credit granting for agricultural businesses.Today?s risk management will be given two complements in this study.

Today the milk production per cow is increasing but the milk delivered by the Swedish farmer contains less amounts of fat and protein than earlier. The contents have decreased since 1993. In average the milk contain 4,2 percent fat and 3,4 percent protein. Earlier the fat content in milk was important. Nowadays the dairy?s attention has turned to the milk?s valuable proteins, principally the caseins, which have a considerable nutritional value and are important for several dairy products like cheese and yoghurt.

The last years? financial situation has contributed to an increased willingness from the banks to handle risks. The most important risk to cope with is a risk that is related to a customer?s ability to repay loans. Forecasts indicate that in the future, Swedish farmers will be facing profitability challenges, which points to a need to reconsider the banks procedures considering risk management in credit granting for agricultural businesses.Today?s risk management will be given two complements in this study.

Dairy farming in Uganda provides a source of food, employment and income. Previous studies have revealed high frequencies of bovine mastitis, a costly disease for the dairy farmer. The aims of this study were to investigate the bacteriological panorama in milk from udder quarters with clinical (CM) and subclinical mastitis (SCM) and to determine the antimicrobial susceptibility in staphylococcal isolates. Further, we intended to establish the prevalence of subclinical mastitis and to investigate some environmental factors and animal properties that might influence the frequency of mastitis. For CM, farmers made contact with the members of this study when recognizing an animal with CM.

After I heard that two deadly accidents in farming 2003 were created by work with cattle, I got the idea of writing this degree project. So far there are not too many reports written about safety for the worker nor the animal. Therefore it will fit in with a report about safe handling of free stalled cattle. The Swedish Board of Agriculture would also like to do an information material about outside stalled cattle with this degree project as a background. The collecting of material was made by visiting farmers. The goal was to visit 15 ? 20 herds and when this is being written 19 herds have been visited.

During the last decades the fertility of dairy cows has declined in the same rate as the milk yield has increased. This is a result of the negative genetic correlation between milk yield and fertility, failure to show estrous signs and metabolic problems in the cow. The purpose of this review was to investigate the function of metabolites and hormones as markers for disturbances in fertility, health and production in the dairy cow. There are several metabolites that are suggested to indicate the cow?s energy balance.

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.

The purpose of this work was to see if it was possible to rebuild an old dairy house into a house fore sheep production. The goals fore the work was to see witch kind of production model was suitable, how the actual drawing would look like and witch kind of interior was needed. The building was built in the beginning of 1900. It is located on the mountain Kinnekulle in Sweden. It was a big production fore its time and hade about 60 dairy cows. It was a lot of hard work because the floor was built by big stone blocks and it was very hard to rebuild when some more automatic solutions came fore handling all the manure. The idea of remaking the building came when we rebuilt the roof fore 5 years ago.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the cow-level association between acute hoof lesions and the somatic milk cell count in dairy cattle. Cows from three loose-housed Swedish dairy herds were enrolled in the study if they had an acute hoof lesion treated by a veterinarian or professional hoof trimmer during the preceding year, according to farmer records. Studied lesions were sole ulcer, dermatitis, interdigital necrobacillosis and hoof abscess, in each case causing lameness. For each hoof-diseased cow, 0 to 3 healthy cows were included, matched with respect to herd, breed, parity and lactation stage. Cell counts were obtained from monthly test recordings from one month before to three months after the hoof-lesion diagnosis, and log-transformed.

Feed costs constitute a large part of the expenses of dairy farmers. Pasture is a high quality feed with a low cost. However, feeding with concentrates has been shown to enhance milk yield (Leaver, 1985; Bargo et al., 2003; Stockdale, 2004). The purpose with this study was to investigate how milk yield and milk composition were affected as the concentrate proportion in the diet decreased. Pasture behaviour was examined to see if the different concentrate levels affected the time cows spent grazing and ruminating.

Peat litter is a soft material with high absorbency. About hundred years ago many farmers in Sweden used peat litter to their dairy cows. After the World War II the use of peat litter decreased and the farmers used more straw. Nowadays (year 2007), when it is harder to find straw and sawdust to buy, peat litter is advancing again. The purpose with this study is to investigate peat as a litter to dairy cows.

AbstractAn approaching overproduction of cereals and a future uncertain supply of non genetic modified vegetable protein feedstuffs have increased the interest in an expansion of the domestic production of protein feedstuffs in Norway. Besides rapeseed (Brassica campestris), peas (Pisum sativum) may be the most suitable crop for this purpose. Peas are characterized by having a relatively high content of crude protein, ranging between 20-26%, a high content of starch, 42-51%, and a low content of fat. In general, the energy value for peas is higher than for barley but lower than for rapeseed and soybean meal.Pea protein consists of albumins and globulins to 85-100%, which leads to the fact that a large part of the pea protein is soluble and degradable in the rumen. Starch in peas is on the other hand to a large extent resistant to rumen degradation compared to starch from other starch rich feedstuffs.