To guarantee protection of our drinking water, water catchment protections are established. These are divided into three different zones and in the first zone it is most likely that an activity, such as agriculture, will contaminate the water resource. Hence the activities are strongly regulated or banned. The EU communion is working towards a sustained water quality through several directives; Nitrate Directive, Waterframwork directives and Sustainable use of pesticide directive. The main purpose is to regulate the diffuse pollution from agriculture.This thesis is about how Denmark, Germany and France are working towards a sustainable agriculture within water protection areas.

Automatic milking systems (AMS) are part of a growing trend in Sweden and the number of milk-producing farms is decreasing rapidly. One main reason for the AMS is its ability to facilitate work for the Farmer. The effects of introduction prior to calving have not been documented earlier and Farmers are not in agreement, however they seldom see a problem with the introduction. The aim of this report is to find differences between two groups of heifers, where one group is trained i.e. introduced to the AMS before calving and the other group is introduced after calving.

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.

Lyckebo farm is the original name of the four building big farm, where year 2000, the former Farmer established Maglarp/ Lyckebo golfcourse on his land of culture. In 2007, new owners are approaching the Maglarps golfcourse with thoughts of expanding the business. A first step in that direction is to form the area of the entrance, the specific area the visitors are staying at before entering the actual golfcourse to play. The designproposal is inspired by the peasant garden history of southern Sweden during the nineteenth centuary. It also aims to satisfy the demands of function and usefullness of a golfcourse today.

The Swedish cooperative Lantmännen Ekonomiska Förening has initiated a project labelled "Operation Blåljus" that includes an extensive program for closing down elevators. The number of elevators will be reduced from 92 to approximately 15 after harvest of 2007. The objective of Blåljus is to increase the price of grain with 10 öre/kg. A project has been initiated at the Lantmännen Grain division where the purpose is to provide the Farmers with support in their decisions and practical advice how they can load a 35 ton grain truck on 30 minutes. The result from the project will serve as a support system to the Farmer in his ambition to achieve cost efficient systems to load a truck with grain on the farm.

Mountain holding in the 21st century ? difficulties and possibilities This study examines the difficulties and possibilities that mountain holding Farmers have today. The following questions were considered: i) Who is cultivating mountain holdings today? ii) Which is the most important reason to keep animals there? iii) What kind of subsidies are most common? iv) What kinds of animals and what breeds are the most common? v) For how long period of time are the animals kept at the mountain holdings every season? vi) How are the fundamental regulations in the animal welfare law being followed, and are there any problems/conflicts in keeping animals at the mountain holdings? vii) What meaning do the animals have for the Farmers and what are the Farmer?s thoughts about the future? A survey based on these issues was sent out to 107 mountain holdings Farmers with animals on grazing land, where 59 % submitted a response. The results showed that knowledge on how to keep animals at the mountain holdings was overall good.

Cows are ruminants and they need fibers in their feed and sufficient eating time to function psychologically and physiologically. Many of our cows don?t get enough forage and too much concentrates, which given in the wrong way may cause health and behavior problems. Too much concentrates at once makes the pH in the rumen sink and this may cause decreased fiber utilization since the microbes in the rumen are negatively affected by this. The cow may also get serious problems such as laminitis and abomasal dislocation.

 In 2009, the responsibility for animal welfare was moved from the local authorities at the municipality(kommunerna) to the County Administrative Board(länsstyrelsen). This was a result of many differences between the different municipalities in how they handled animal welfare. Shoulder lesions of sows are a matter of opinion and therefore, a complicated question. Sows suffer from shoulder lesions for many reasons: e.g. the amount of straw available.

This paper aims to, through a literature review, examine how to best design and adapt calf huts to meet the calf's physiological requirements and reduce the infection pressure for enteric and respiratory diseases. It illuminates how the calf relates to different temperatures and climate, which temperature control mechanisms it uses and its ability to perform these regulations, as well as providing a summary of the past decades´ research on the calf huts housing system. These two theory chapters, along with a concluding discussion, provide a better understanding of how to, especially in temperate climates, design the most suitable calf hut, which cater to the calf's both thermal comfort and physical health. The literature suggests that the calf's own temperature control works well to counteract the temperature outside the desired range, and that one of the most important factors rather is ventilation of a calf hut, which reduces moisture and pathogens. The conclusion of this paper is mainly that there is not an obvious way to place and construct a calf hutch and that most design principles contribute to both positive and negative effects simultaneously.

Under lång tid har hälsoarbetet bestått av insatser inom det patogena området som fokuserar på orsaker till ohälsa och sjukdom. Utifrån ett salutogent perspektiv söks istället hälsans ursprung. Perspektivet utgår från vilka faktorer som gör att människor mår bra och vidmakthåller hälsan trots omständigheter som bidrar till att de är eller har varit utsatta för potentiellt sjukdomsframkallande biologiska eller psykosociala faktorer. Syftet med studien var att studera lantbrukares upplevelse av hälsa, med avsikt att beskriva salutogena faktorer för hälsa som kan vara användbara i hälsofrämjande arbete. Datainsamlingen har skett genom en postenkät till 300 lantbrukare i Skåne.

Actinomycosis is a rare, deep-seated infection of the jaw of cattle that include the progressive enlargement of bone structures. It is caused by Actinomyces bovis, a gram-positive rod found as a normal commensal of the alimentary canal in otherwise healthy animals. This paper shortly describes Actinomyces bovis and its ability to cause "lumpy jaw" or actinomycosis in cattle. It will describe its pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment and some clinical presentations. The incidence of symptomatic actinomycosis infection is quite low in Sweden today.

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.

In Sweden, all milk needs to be pasteurized. Unpasteurized milk [ OPM ] may only be sold in a smaller scale directly from the Farmer to the consumer. The law was introduced in 1939, to prevent tuberculosis, which poses no threat today. There are other reasons, such as keepability and risk of pathogenic bacteria, why milk is pasteurized. Despite these risks, many consume OPM.

In modern dairy production, the newborn calf generally is separated from its mother and put in a single pen for some time before it is introduced to group housing. Group housing is becoming more and more common because it saves the Farmer a lot of valuable time. Even thought group housing has a lot of benefits it is often associated with a higher morbidity and mortality in the young calves. Therefore, knowing the optimal way to use the group pen lies in many Farmers? interests and the importance of different factors such as the optimal age of introduction is important to evaluate. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of age at introduction to group housing on the health of the calves in the group pen.

This work is about silage contaminated with slugs (Arion lusitanicus). The hypothesis was: Do slugs affect the nutritional value and hygiene quality of silage? During the winter season 2007/2008 silages were discarded in big amounts due to the contamination of slugs. Both the Swedish Farmer Association (LRF) and the National Veterinary Institute (SVA) received phone calls from Farmers and animal owners about contaminated silage. The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and SVA decided to initiate this project as a master thesis.