Healthy calves are the foundation in order to run a profitable diary production. Being healthy as calf results in a better start in life and good growth is expected to follow. Within dairy production it becomes more common to rear calves in groups and feed them by an automatic milk feeder. The milk feeder enables for the calves in greater extent to ingest milk or milk replacer several times per day and they are also able to perform natural behaviors in greater extent. Group rearing of calves puts higher demands on the animal keepers to localize individual calves in the group pen, showing signs of illness.

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).

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.

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.

In Sweden regulations stipulates that dairy cows are kept on pasture, or given the opportunity to spend time outside during a coherent period of between two to four months, depending on region. The transition out to pasture is a big change from the winter period in the stable, especially for the modern high yielding dairy cows. The let out to pasture includes a change in feed, environment, and new routines. There are indications that the milk somatic cell count (SCC) rises in a peak shortly after the let out. The purpose of this study was to see if peaks in the SCC could be observed after the let out, and to study the contribution of inflammatory cells (neutrophils) and if the milk composition are affected. The study included 35 cows that were kept in stable during the winter.

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.

The milk production has developed rapidly the last years. The milk production per cow is increasing and the production units are larger with an increasing number of animals and a decreasing number of workers. Many milk producers invest in automatic milking systems (AM) to meet this change. In these systems the cows can voluntary decide milking frequency and usually the milking frequency are higher than two times per day. But how does the milking frequency effect the composition of the milk? The aim of the present study was to study the effect of milking frequency on the milk composition and the milk fat quality.

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.

Milk fat is an important feature in many different milk products and other foodstuffs and it is often crucial for the dairy plants that the milk fat is stable for different manufacturing processes. Lipolysis is the enzymatic degradation of fat and is the one of the causes for an elevated amount of free fatty acids (FFA) in milk. Further, the change in fatty acid (FA) composition in milk can affect the stability of the product and also the manufacturing process. Both internal and external factors, at farm level or at the dairy plants can affect both FA composition and content of FFA. Milking frequency (MF=number of milkings per cow and day) and the composition of feed are two examples of factors generally performed at farm level. The objective of the present study was to evaluate how FA composition of milk and amount of FFA are influenced by two different ingredients supplemented to concentrate.

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.

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..

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.

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.