Grassland is a great part of Swedish agriculture and there is a demand of what the grassland yield is in practice. To be able to control the economic of the milkproduction it is important for the farmer to know how big quantities of pasture there is to use during the year.The work is based on interviews of 22 farmers from southern part of Sweden. Their area of grassland fluctuate between 16 up to 360 hectares. The questionnaire content 32 questions.The most common way to weight the green plant material is to drive over a scale, and to measure the dry extract with your own gauge. It takes in average two minutes toweight one load of green plant material.

The species in the genus bumblebees (Bombus) are important pollinators. In the world there are 250 bumblebee species and there are 34 species in Norway. The purpose of this study is 1) to assess changes in the species composition of bumblebees in twenty different places in Norway that have been inventoried first one time between 1939-1960 and the second time in 2012, and 2) to relate species richness and distributions to current landscape composition with the aid of orthophotos. In this study, I have used regression analyzes on the different bumblebee species that were present or absent at the inventory, using the premises of the following variables: low or high altitude, latitude, longitude and seven different types of land use (farmland, building/plots, open land/pasture, forest, wetland and open or snow-covered ground above the tree line) to see if there was any relationship between each species and the different variables. I have not analyzed what the landscape looked like at the first inventories and therefore we cannot say whether it has changed and if that is why species number has decreased. This would be interesting to study further and to see if there is any relationship between landscape changes and bumblebee?s species decline.

Outdoor housing of horses? best fulfils the horses? need for physical activity and it is an alternative to the more cost and energy demanding indoor housing in stables. Furthermore, if outdoor housed horses have access to shelter they can generally cope well with adverse weather conditions such as high or low ambient temperature, heavy rain or strong winds. In this study, the daytime shelter-seeking behaviour of three groups of horses housed outdoors was studied during the summer. The aim was to evaluate whether shelter use is related to weather variables (e.g., ambient temperature and wind speed) and insect harassment. The shelter-seeking behaviour was studied for three different groups of horses: Group 1) eight individually housed horses in paddocks that had access to three different shelter types (C: closed on three sides with roof, R: open on three sides with roof, W: closed on three sides without roof), Group 2) 25 group housed mares with foals on pasture with access to shelters C, and Group 3) ten mares without foals on pasture without access to shelter. Each group was studied for eight days.

The forest and mire landscape surrounding the north Swedish villages have been of fundamental importance through time for the farmers. In the Scandinavian summer farm system the forest and mire pasture was used to its full potential. The system consisted of smaller summer farms some kilometres from the main farm in the village, and were the livestock grazed in the forest around the summer farm. The livestock affect their environment, and grazed forests generally contain a higher biodiversity than an ungrazed forest. The overall aim of this thesis is to understand the impact of livestock grazing on a northern forest ecosystem over a long time period.

Safe retrieval of nutrients from human excreta to fertilize crops in order to gain adequate yields will increase food security and sustainability in agriculture areas with nutrient-poor fields. Safe and nutritious food will meet the dietary needs of the individual which promotes public health and the ability of an active life. Human excreta should be considered as a resource instead of being assumed as waste. Human faeces and urine is excellent fertilizers which may close the nutrient loop if utilized properly. However, sanitation of the excreta is required to prevent disease transmission by reducing the content of gastrointestinal pathogens such as bacteria, viruses and parasites. The objective of this study was to in small scale evaluate the sanitation in a combined liquid compost and urea treatment by monitor the inactivation of bacteria and viruses at the combination three start temperatures, 45, 40 and 35 °C, and three additions of urea, 0.5, 0.75 and 1 % and reference, 0 % urea addition.

The idea behind this project came from a feed study executed two years during the lambing season. Both years wool loss was experienced. Low temperature in combination with shearing was believed to cause the wool loss the first year, while protein deficiency was believed to be the cause the second year. In the literature many causes of wool loss are described; mechanical wear, telogen effluvium, bacterial dermatitis, external parasites, wool break, scrapie, genetic causes and nutritional deficiencies are some examples. The aim of this thesis was to study causes for wool loss and how common wool loss is in Swedish sheep herds.

SCA is the largest private owned forest owner in Sweden, with an ownership of 2 million hectares of productive forestland. To manage the planning of such large areas and to fit the traditional organization structure of a Swedish forest company, the planning approach is subdivided into three stages; strategic, tactical and operational. The strategic part, based on a statistic sample of stands, returns a harvest level estimate which should then be implemented at actual sites in the tactical part. This procedure can lead to incompatible solutions as the strategic solution is not necessarily possible to translate into actual sites in the tactical plan. The geographic aspect is important in tactical planning due to the large costs for moving equipment and maintenance of a large number of forest roads.

Swedish beef production has during the past year decreased while the consumption has increased. It´s imported beef that takes market shares. The purpose with this degreeproject is to investigate if the restaurants in Sweden are using imported or Swedish beef and the reason for their choice. The purpose is to find out if there is something the Swedish beef producers can change to increase Swedish beef in restaurants. My expectation is that the demand for Swedish beef will increase in restaurant and later even among consumers. I have interviewed ten chiefs in different restaurants and asked them the following questions: Is it the price, quality or something else that influences your choise? Does it matter to their customers if they serve Swedish or imported beef? How is the marketing of Swedish beef? It appeared both Swedish and imported beef on the restaurants.

This study examines how farmers certified by KRAV face proposed regulations on organic soils put forward by KRAV economic association among others, and how they are affected economically. These soils are, from an environmental perspective, interesting as a target for production regulations as they cause greenhouse gas emissions through decomposition of organic material when cultivated. The regulations advocate that organic soils should be grown with pasture where soil cultivation is only allowed every fith year which implies that possible adjustments of cultivation have to be made in order to fulfill the regualtions. Collection of data have been made through a questionnaire sent out to 574 farmers certified by KRAV. The answers have been analysed using a decision making model and statistical findings suggest that proportion of organic soils, type of production, economic conditions and farmers? goals and values have an influence on whether the regulations and potential cultivation adjustments have been considered or not.

This study examines the organization of the village society in Benestad, in southern Sweden, during the period from 1886 to 1928. The study focuses on the commonly owned resources in the village and how the landowners there came together and shared the resources. By studying the records of the societies? meetings, and in particular the cases that concerns the common resources, a categorization has been done. The results of the study show that the landowners in Benestad shared pasture lands, milk carriage and other resources with one another. Overall, the village society had a strong organization with at least two yearly meetings about the commonly owned resources.

During the summer of 2005 a number of steer producers in Skåne, Sweden, found that their animals graded less favourable according to the EUROP carcass grading system when slaughtered, than ordinary. The aim with this project was to determine factors that affects the production result in steer production and to find the reason to the lower classification. The project was initiated by Anita Persson, LRF, Skåne and was preformed with supervision from Ingemar Olsson, SLU, and Jens Fjelkner, Skånesemin. Ten producers of dairy steers located in Skåne was chosen for this study. The producers were interviewed to collect information about their steer production with respect to their planning and results.

As the Swedish governments long term goals include a reduction of fossil fuel dependency, increasing pressure is placed upon energy companies to create and develop new solutions for renewable energy. The following case study was done in collaboration with the company Sydved Energileveranser AB and one of their contractors, Enarssons Skogsentreprenad AB. The objective of the study is to examine the bioenergy situation in region of Skåne and evaluate the potential solutions in the region for a forest-fuel assortment, based on a bioenergy-cutting-system. As a part of this study I have compared ordinary manual cuttings done with a chain saw and cuttings made using the new ?bio- energy cutting system?. The cuttings made under both systems were tested in areas near agricultural fields or pasture land in order to maintain an open landscape.

Den ekologiska produktionen styrs av många olika lagar och regler som den konventionella produktionen inte behöver följa. Dessa regler kan ses som en välfärdsgaranti i den ekologiska slaktkycklingproduktionen då reglerna främst är skrivna för att kycklingarna ska kunna utföra sina naturliga beteenden i en passande miljö. Rastgårdar ska finnas till de ekologiska kycklingarna för att de ska få beta, få motion och få chansen att bygga upp sitt naturliga immunförsvar. I många fall ses rastgården som en positiv aspekt av den ekologiska produktionen, men det finns även problem relaterade till utevistelsen då exempelvis vilda djur kan lockas till slaktkycklingarna och på så vis stressa upp dem, smitta dem med parasiter och patogener eller äta upp dem. Det är vedertaget att den ekologiska produktionens dödlighet är högre än den konventionella produktionens på grund av rovdjuren och sjukdomarna och de ekologiska kycklingarna utsätts i många fall för fler smittorisker på grund av utevistelsen.

The lack of fresh and clean water today causes severe problems, mostly in developing countries. Waterborne diseases like typhoid, cholera, amoebic dysentery and diarrhea create health problems and deaths among people. There is a need for low cost interventions like household-based water treatment and safe storage (HWTS). Solvatten AB is a Swedish company based in Stockholm. Their product, Solvatten, is a household water treatment unit that can treat water containing viruses, parasites and bacteria.

Calf health is of importance both from a financial perspective and from an animal welfare point of view. Housing system and environment are factors affecting the calves? health. The objective of this project was to make a review of literature on calf health and housing and to perform an observational study on calf health at Nötcenter Viken, Research Dairy Farm, Lantmännen Sweden that changed calf housing system; from a traditional indoor system (Group IN) to outdoor hutches (Group OUT). It was only the housing system that was changed; the routines and feed were the same in both systems.