The aim of this literature study was to analyze how milk urea concentration is working as a measure of the nitrogen supply to rumen microbes and indicator of the environmental load. Questions included in this literature study were how to improve the Dairy cattle nitrogen efficiency and what correlations there are between milk urea, nitrogen efficiency and crude protein content in the feed. Effects on the reproduction from high ration protein content are also addressed. Dairy cattle are today fed with large proportions of protein which could lead to high expenditure of feed and environmental pollutions. The nitrogen can be lost to the environment by different pathways; leaching, denitrification or by emission to the air.

The objective of this thesis was to get more knowledge about how to design a dairy farm reducing the working hours and the work tasks whit high work load. I will try to reduce the working hours and the tasks whit high work load on my own farm witch I am about inherit. Today, the old stanchion barn has room for about 60 cows and 74 young cattle and need two men to run it every day. The total acre is 188 hectare, 100 hectare forest, 65 hectare farmlands and 23 hectare natural pasture. I have studied two solutions. In the first solution, I will use my old barn for young cattle and build a new barn for the cows.

During the last decade a new technique in animal breeding has developed called genomic selection. It is based on estimations of the effect from genetic markers on traits that are calculated in a reference population. By genotyping individuals, genomic breeding values can then be estimated without phenotypic observations. The aim of this essay is to investigate the response of genomic selection on breeding schemes for Dairy cattle. The accuracy of the genomic breeding values is affected by the proportion of observations included in the validation set and how often the equation for estimating breeding values is reevaluated.

To be able to provide the growing human population with food, the productivity of the animals as well as land use needs to be improved and intensified. Hence, understanding the behavior of animals is crucial both for animal welfare and productivity as well as the management of the cattle. There are many factors affecting the grazing behavior of cattle in tropical conditions, such as human-animal interactions, herd management, breed, season and temperature. The purpose of this study was to investigate the grazing behavior of two tropical cattle breeds, Ankole and Boran cattle. Kenyan Boran belongs to a zebu type of cattle and is preferred to many other breeds due to the higher productive and reproductive capacity and adaptability to tropical conditions.

Since feeding fodder crops to dairy cows is a heavy and time-consuming but often disregarded line of work, this study wishes to view the different possibilities that are currently available to decrease the time to feed and apply this knowledge on an existing farm. For this purpose, four farms have been studied due to what feeding systems that are currently used and how long time the feeding required. The occurring systems are either mobile, i.e. a feed mixer operated by a tractor witch feeds the cattle via a drivable fodder table, or a stationery mixer, i.e. an electrically powered mixer which fills an automatic feeder.

Drinking water from drilled wells has a high content of iron and other minerals in many places in Sweden. Questions about the association between the quality of drinking water and the health of dairy cows are regulary asked both by advisers and dairy farmers. There are so far not many studies published about the relevance for high iron content in water and dairy cow health and production. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate if there is a connection between the iron content in water and the health of dairy cows. Initially a literature study was made about iron and it´s function in ruminants.

Several bulls in Sweden are culled because of lameness. Studies of beef bulls have shown that osteochondrosis is an important underlying cause of hind limb problems (Persson, 2003; Dutra, 1998). Osteochondrosis in horses, dogs, swine, poultry and man are well documentated in the literature, but there are few studies in cattle. The prevalence of osteochondrosis in dairy bulls in Sweden is unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence and localisation of osteochondrosis in the hindlimbs of dairy bulls. This study consists of 48 one-year-old bulls divided into four groups related to which farm they came from.

Commonly held dietary guidelines discourage full-fat dairy consumption due its to high levels of saturated fatty acids, which are believed to aversely influence cardiovascular disease risk. Cardiovascular diseases cause more than one third of deaths in the developed world. With dairy often providing a large part of energy and nutrients in Western diets, research into its effects on human health is warranted. Several recent studies have suggested a protective role of dairy in the development of cardiometabolic disease. However, many of these have used imprecise methods of dietary assessment, based on questionnaires or interviews. Biomarkers are emerging as a means of evaluating diet in a more objective way. Currently used dairy fat biomarkers are minor fatty acid constituents of dairy that preferably are unique to dairy and not influenced by endogenous metabolism.

The Dairy business is changing a lot because of some scandals in the agricultural area for example the BSE crises in Great Britain. Because of the scandals the food industry and the farm association have created a certifying system; IP-Sigill Swedish standard system. We contacted Skånemejerier as they have been successful in the certifying area. They asked us if we wanted to do a study in the certifying area of dairy farmers. At Skånemejerier they gave us most of the literature in the area about certifying. The result of the study, is that we have taken up the most common remark?s. The most frequent remark is journal over routines in management of dairy cows on daily basis. Another remark of the study is that the frequency of the remarks decreases with greater production..

As the world´s population increases and people's living conditions are improving, larger areas are needed for houses as well as food production. This means that new areas are exploited and that people, livestock, blood sucking insects and wild animals are forced to live close together. In combination with the global warming, leading to extreme weather such as floods and storms, this allows both new and old pathogens to emerge. The number of "emerging infectious diseases", EIDs, has increased in recent years and many of them have their origin in poor, tropical countries. Moçambique is therefore considered to be a high risk area for EIDs. Schmallenberg virus, SBV, was discovered in 2011 as an "emerging infectious disease" in dairy cows in Germany.

Ultrasound is still a relatively new method for the diagnosis of abdominal conditions in cattle. The objective of this study is to evaluate ultrasound as a diagnostic tool for the common diseases affecting high-producing Dairy cattle, for example traumatic reticuloperitonitis, right- and left displacement of the abomasum, fatty liver, wound infections and abscesses. This paper is a combined litterature study and a report of the results from ultrasound examinations of bovine patients at the ruminant clinic at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The study includes two healthy cows from the ruminant clinic, and seven patients with abdominal related diseases. The examinations were made with a 2-6 MHz curvilinear transducer and both the right and left sides of the abdomen were scanned.

It becomes more important to consider different behaviour traits in the selection for dairy cows to be suitable in the production systems of today. The purpose of this investigation was to study the genetic background to behavioural traits and the heritabilities for temperament, rank order, aggressiveness, feeding behaviour and for learning behaviour. Moreover, the genetic correlations to other traits were studied. To be included in a breeding programme a trait needs to have enough genetic variation, a moderate to high heritability or to be correlated to another measurable trait. Behaviour is a quantitative trait affected by many genes and the environment.

Chewing behaviour includes both eating and ruminating activity. Chewing behaviour is of great importance for the feed intake as through the action of chewing (i.e. eating and ruminating) animals mechanically process the forages in small particle sizes and prepare the food for digestion. As cattle grow the chewing behaviour changes along with increasing body weight and chewing efficiency is increased. The aim of this thesis was to review the available scientific literature in order to describe chewing behaviour in growing cattle, as well as the factors that affect this behaviour.

Among the Indigenous cattle breeds in Indonesia, the Bali cattle is the most preferred by small farmers. The Bali cattle is a beef breed, and is considered to have several advantageous characteristics and to be well adapted to the country?s harsh environmental tropical conditions with drought and rain. The main aim of this project was to phenotype of Bali cattle from different locations in order to identify and document diversity within the Bali cattle breed based on their observable characteristics, to compare cattle from different areas and production systems to see the effect of management on phenotype. In this study, 107 cows and bulls of the breed Bali cattle, from Kalimantan, Sumatra, Lombok and Bali were phenotyped.

To reconstruct a building is a long-term investment for farmers and it is important that people with different qualifications are involved at an early stage for making the system adapted to the animals as well the animal keeper. Therefore, ethologists who can contribute with their expertise are needed to design the system and get it to function well for the animals.A Swedish farmer who planned to rebuild her stall for tied Dairy cattle to a loose-housing system for recruitment heifers for milk production asked me as an ethologist to find a system which can be fit to her existing tie-stall barn for 30 dairy cows, considering the animal needs in terms of movement, social interactions and play behaviors, and to theoretically compare the system with other systems with respect to the behaviors mentioned.The theoretical comparison between different systems was made through a scientific literature review.In agreement with the animal keeper I set out to fit a system with feeding cubicles, a system with cubicles and a system with deep straw bedding to the barn. After measurements were taken and preliminary drawings were outlined it was found that only the feeding cubicle system was possible to fit to the barn.The space provided will limit the animals to perform some playing behaviors. To decrease aggressive interactions between animals even thought a limiting area it is possible to provide partitions between resources animals compete around to prevent that more than one animal can get success to the resource at a particular place at one time. To increase the animal movement in the system the water trays were moved to the outer wall instead of kept in contact with the stalls.Although this report provides guidelines for rebuilding, other competences regarding building construction and a pre-test of the suggested building solution according to Swedish legislation are needed before the rebuilding can start.The results are directed mainly to the owner of the barn, but the literature review can be used by other cattle farmers and might bring increased understanding of the possible effects of different building solution on the animals..