Livestock of pastoralists provide meat, milk, blood, dung and are useful for transportation purposes. In semi-arid and arid areas with very low precipitation the herder must often walk far distances to feed the livestock. This affects the animals? production, especially of milk. Previous studies have investigated how to improve milk production in terms of milking strategies in cattle.

Protecting the environment has with time grown to take a more central role in the society. Agriculture plays an important role in the society since this sector produces our food. More thorough research on how agriculture affects the environment is therefore motivated. This research can be used to improve the agricultural practice from an environmental point of view. This is something that both the farmers and the consumers can profit from. This study aims to form the basis for creating environmental indicators for use of nitrogen and energy on dairy farms. Twenty-three farmers in western Sweden have been interviewed about their farms, both organic and conventional. They produce milk with different intensity, defined as the amount of milk delivered (sold) per hectare of arable land.

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.

Milk ejection in dairy cows can be inhibited if oxytocin is not released from the pituitary gland. The problem with inhibition of the milk let down is not new, but has recently regained interest. It is observed during different types of emotional stress, for example when cows are moved to an unfamiliar environment, during oestrus, changing from suckling to machine milking or when being milked for the first time. The aim of the study was to examine the extent of cows with disturbed milk ejection in Sweden. A survey was sent out to 1000 dairy farmers in order to collect data about herd size, housing systems and routines at calving and milking.

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.

Yeast and Clostridia is a problem in silage for farmers as contaminated silage may result in poor animal health and milk quality. Clostridia can produce toxins that, when consumed, acts as neurotoxins, it may also cause blown cheeses if the Clostridia contaminates milk. The purpose of this study was to investigate the cause, effect and interaction of yeasts and Clostridia in silage. Clostridia are microorganisms which are strictly anaerobic and consume carbohydrates and protein in the silage. Yeast is a fungus that is facultative aerobic and feed on carbohydrates in the silage.

Water is an essential factor for both people and animals, and access to water is therefore of great importance. The water access also largely determines the availability of food for people and feed for animals. The aim of this study was to survey the affect of water access on milk production from dairy animals. The study included nineteen farm visits that were made in the Nyando district in Kenya between February and Mars 2011. Farm visits included interviews with questions about for example number of dairy animals, milk production, water access, feed and water routines.

Dairy cows transform grass to milk with help from ruminal microorganisms that can digest indigestible fiber in their feed. The digestive system of the cow is adapted to a diet consisting of forage and disorders like acidosis, laminitis and abomasal displacement can occur if the feed contains too much starch. To achieve the highest production possible the cow has to be given a high amount of concentrate or grain as the difference in milk yield is significant, approximately 1000 kg energy corrected milk per cow and year between conventional and organic cows that are fed a lower versus a higher share of forage. If the cow shall be able to eat the same amount of energy from forage as from grain or concentrate the eating- and rumination time gets longer and she might not be able to eat enough, which will result in a lower milk yield and will make it harder for the cow to recover from the negative energy balance that originate from the beginning of the lactation. Fat and in a sense protein content differs also depending on if the cow is given a high or low share of forage..

Mastitis is the most common disease of dairy cows. Mastitis can be painful for the dairy cow and causes economical losses for the farmer. These losses are due to decreased milk production, more working hours for the farmer, treatment costs and possible costs due to culling of the cow. The udder inflammation, mastitis, is often caused by bacteria infection. One of the most common bacteria found to cause mastitis in Sweden is Staphylococcus aureus (S.

The study was carried out at the Kungsängen Research Centre, Department of Animal Nutrition and Management, Swedish University of Agriculture Sciences, Uppsala. The technical development in dairy production has resulted in a housing system where feeding and milking is done automatically without human contact, a so called automatic milking system. The motives for utilising an automatic milking system, is to increase the animal welfare and to decrease the need for manual labour. However, the system does involve a change for the animals, among the effects is the deprival or the diminishment of a chance for synchronous behaviour and the animals have to agree among themselves in which order they use the feeding stations and the milking unit itself. How and if this affects the animals well-being and production is yet to be solved. A possible way to form an opinion on this, is to study the animals ranking order along with hormone profiles and production. The purpose of this work was to study the effect of low- vs.

The aim of the study was to investigate if the Grazemore Decision Support System (DSS) is able to provide a grazing management strategy that gives a high utilisation of grazed grass in milk production in the north of Scandinavia. To do this, a grazing experiment was planed and performed during the summer 2005. Simulations in the DSS were run to get a suggestion of how the cows should graze, grazing calendar 1. Deviations and updates during the season resulted in the simulated grazing calendar 2. During the experiment, the actual milk yield was recorded twice weekly. The difference between actual and predicted milk yield by Grazemore DSS was analysed statistically with regression analysis and the mean square prediction error (MSPE) was estimated.

Music production software has a strong tradition of two-dimensional graphical user interface (GUI), in which the time line is represented as a flat composition either horizontally (from left to right) or vertically (from top to bottom). In my degree work titled Sequi, I approach music composition from a different angle. Instead of a two-dimensional time line with only two possibly ways of progression (forward or backward) I constructed a three-dimensional GUI with the maximum of four different ways of progression from any given point in a composition. The height axis is used to describe time-intervals (the time between downbeats) and the wide and depth axes are used to describe progression from one sound to another..

Milk allergens were digested by allowing them to flow through a chromatography column, where pepsin was conjugated to the stationary phase of the column. The allergen fragments were then characterized both biochemically, by using SDS-PAGE and gel permeation chromatography, and immunologically, by examining their reactivity to IgE and monoclonal antibodies..

Heifer?s growth may be divided into three main phases: calf period, puberty and pregnancy. When the heifers are about three months old a critical period begins. This period ends when the heifer reach puberty and have her first oestrus at around 9-12 months of age. In the critical period the mammary gland starts to grow at a fast rate and Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) transport the growth signals to the mammary glands.

A shorter dry period length has in studies abroad showed some positive effects among high yielding dairy cows. Among other things it has been suggested that the periparturient metabolic stress becomes lower, that the fertility is improved and dry off becomes gentler for the udder, due to a lower milk yield. The milk yield is generally reduced during the first period after calving, especially among primiparous cows. The aim of this master thesis was to investigate how Swedish cows were affected by a shortened dry period, regarding milk yield, metabolism, health, body condition and body weight from two months before calving to some weeks after calving. Also plasma concentration of lactose during the period before calving was determined.