Most of the beef production in Sweden has been integrated with milk production. Since the 1990:s, the number of Dairy cows has decreased. A specialised beef production has developed in purpose to compensate for this decrease. The consumption of beef have increased in the last decade, but the Swedish production has no followed this trend. In 2004, the percentage of beef self-sufficiency in Sweden was 60 %.

The aim of this study was to investigate which elements that functioned in a positive way on the natural behaviors of dairy cattle among KRAV certificated and conventional farms. The study was based on reading of earlier research and completed by interviews with farmers, animal health inspectors and consumers. The results showed us that the KRAV certificated farms used only loose housing barns and that the cattle were allowed a pasturetime of five months, or more, in one year. Our interviews with the consumers confirmed that KRAV was a well known trademark. The conventional farms were more flexible in their choice of housing systems, and used both loose housing barns and barns with the cattle tethered.

The Swedish dairy sector is facing several challenges the coming years. One big challenge is how they will secure the access of their raw material milk in the future. The number of milk producers has decreased for an extended period of time, but was for a long time partly compensated by an increased productivity among the remaining milk producers. From year 2000 that trend was broken and also the quantity of milk produced started to fall quickly. Milko is a dairy company with members from Dalsland in the south to Jämtland in the north. During the first seven moths 2007, their number of members decreased by almost a fourth, from 1 272 to 974.

ABSTRACT. Mastitis is one of the most common diseases affecting Dairy cows worldwide. In Sweden annu-ally about 60% of the Dairy cows get infected and Staphylococcus aureus cause approximately 30% of these infections. Mastitis causes enormous economic losses. In Sweden, the costs to cure mastitis are estimated to be 192 million SEK per year, excluding the costs for mastitis prevention.

Background: As Porter?s diamond (1990) suggested, the business environment highly influences firms? strategies. Today, most of the companies have to decide their strategy depending from a worldwide business environment. Yet, strategy researches and the growing importance of marketing for business success also show that customer dimension must be taken into consideration. On some markets and in certain industries, the offer is much higher than the demand and then, companies need to attract customers.

The aim of this study was to investigate which elements that functioned in a positive way on the natural behaviors of dairy cattle among KRAV certificated and conventional farms. The study was based on reading of earlier research and completed by interviews with farmers, animal health inspectors and consumers. The results showed us that the KRAV certificated farms used only loose housing barns and that the cattle were allowed a pasturetime of five months, or more, in one year. Our interviews with the consumers confirmed that KRAV was a well known trademark. The conventional farms were more flexible in their choice of housing systems, and used both loose housing barns and barns with the cattle tethered.

In a time when milk producing farm businesses face decline in profitability it is of great importance to examine how the situation can be improved. This thesis is a study off efficiency in milk producing farm businesses represented by Swedish, Dutch and German farms. The aim of this study is to investigate whether any differences exist between companies in these countries. Moreover, the study includes a mapping of a number of factors that determine how efficient milk production can be managed. This mapping is based on a literature review on prior efficiency studies followed by qualitative interviews with milk production advisors as well as a questionnaire sent out to dairy farmers in Sweden.

The purpose of this literature study was to investigate the possibilities to improve longevity and stayability of beef cattle with breeding. The breeding goal for beef breeds is to produce animals with high capacity for growth and good feed efficiency. Longevity and sustainability are two important features to include in the breeding goal. If longevity is increased each cow can produce more calves and the number of female calves used for recruitment can be reduced and only the best heifers need to be selected for breeding. The benefits of longer life is that it lowers the costs of recruitment animals, it increases the number of young animals that become available for slaughter, and it increases the proportion of high producing animals in the herds.

Mellanchefer sitter idag på en position där de är tvungna att förhålla sig till ett stort antal faktorer som påverkar dem i deras arbete. Deras situation passar därför alldeles utmärkt för att undersöka aspekter som har med begreppet handlingsutrymme att göra. Vi har med hjälp av Tetra Pak Dairy & Beverage Systems AB tagit reda på vilka faktorer som påverkar deras mellanchefers handlingsutrymme. Detta gjordes genom att inledningsvis identifiera ett antal övergripande ämnesområden som ansågs påverka handlingsutrymmet i hög grad. Ämnesområdena fick sedan ligga till grund för de kvalitativa intervjuer vi använde oss av för att få in vårt empiriska material.

Sahlgrenska Academyat University of GothenburgDepartment of Internal Medicine and Clinical NutritionAbstractTitle: Cow?s milk and chronic constipation in children ? A systematic reviewAuthor: Sara Palm & Anna SvenssonSupervisor: Frode SlindeExaminer: Anna WinkvistProgramme: Dietician study programme, 180/240 ECTSType of paper: Examination paper, 15 hpDate: May 27, 2014Background: Chronic functional constipation is common among children. Up to a third of all who seek a paediatrician suffer from constipation and it is a widespread problem for children in many countries. Lately it has been discussed if cow?s milk can be a cause of the constipation and if it should be considered a delayed hypersensitivity.Objective: The aim of this systematic review is to examine whether there is scientific evidence to recommend a cow?s milk-free diet as a potential treatment in chronically constipated children.Search strategy: The literature searches were performed in the databases Pubmed, Scopus and the Cochrane library, using the search terms cow?s milk, constipation, milk proteins, dairy products, milk hypersensitivity, cow milk and cows milk between March 17th and April 4th 2014.Selection criteria: Randomized controlled trials measuring stool frequency in chronically constipated children on a cow?s milk-free diet were included.

Farmers are required to make sure that cattles basic needs are met, but still every year cases of neglect occur where the farmer has not complied within the animal welfare law and regulations. The aim of this study was to investigate how cattle are affected physically and behaviourally by neglect in the form of underfeeding, starvation and lack of sanitation, which animals are most vulnerable to the impact and what prospects they have to recover. The study was conducted as a literature study and the results show that these types of neglect have a large impact on the cattle welfare. Underfeeding and starvation causes physical changes leading to reduced milk production, reduced muscle mass, impaired immune function, poor reproductive performance and changes in rumen microflora leading to decreased number of microbes and pH change. Physical changes due to the lack of sanitation consist of increased vulnerability to hoof diseases and mastitis, burns, and increased sensitivity to temperature.

The Swedish government has proposed that 20 % of the cultivated land in Sweden should be organic by the year 2010 (The Swedish Board of Agriculture, 2008). In addition to this the production of organic food like milk, meat and egg should increase considerably. To reach the government?s goal it is necessary that the Swedish farmers get motivated to convert their production from conventional to organic. Milko is a dairy association that has chosen to focus on organic products, they want to be the leading organic dairy association, and therefore they have a large need for organic milk (Milko, 2008).

The resting area is the most important place in the barn for the dairy cow, sometimes called the heart of the free stall system. Inadequate design of the lying area, and lack of or poor quality of bedding materials may reduce the hygiene of the stall. Poor management regarding the cleanliness of the resting area may lead to poor animal hygiene and increased bacterial growth. This in turn will lead to increased risk for environmental mastitis as well as impairing milk quality through contamination with spores. In this literature study the most commonly used bedding materials; straw, sawdust, wood shavings, clean sand, recycled sand, peat and recycled manure solids, are compared to one another with regards to their ability to resist bacterial growth. Effects of adding hydrated lime to bedding materials have also been studied. Most bacteria need humidity and prefer a quite high water activity to be able to grow.

The object with this work was to create a simple feeding program for beef cows. Another object was that I could learn more about the properties and functions of Excel and Visual Basic. I used parts of a program I designed a few years ago. This old program was neither user friendly nor had it an appealing layout. Initially I decided how I wanted the new program to appear and on which foundation it should be built. I designed various forms into a spread sheet, such as lists and multiple choice buttons. Using VBA (Visual Basic for Application) I could create macros, which used the information chosen in the lists and with the multiple choices to calculate the feeding requirement or the feeding plan.

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.