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.

In Kenya the Maasai pastoralists have based their livelihoods on dairy production and the production goal is to maintain a sufficient milk supply throughout the year. The pastoral dairy production has two vital characteristics; breeding and milking. Traditionally, breeding is the men?s responsibility, while milking is the duty of women. Depending on this partition of chores between men and women, they also have different management routines, ambitions and strategies regarding the milk production.

Organic material used for biogas production can also undergo other treatments. The emissions and impact from the different treatments are evaluated in this environmental assessment, with a focus on energy and climate. The materials included in the study are organic household waste, slaughterhouse waste and liquid manure. Other than biogas production, the possible treatments for organic household waste and slaughterhouse waste are incineration and composting, and for liquid manure storing and spreading. The analysis is based on data and information from current and relevant literature, and relates to the conditions in the Swedish energy system.

The purpose of this analysis was by qualitative semi-structured interviews with twelve children 5-years old and six pre-school teachers at three pre-schools, a total of six departments, find out how pre-school teachers worked with waste separation, if it motivated the children to take care of the environment, and if the work was understandable for the children. The results showed that the children did not comprehend what the pre-school teachers expressed that they worked with regarding waste separation and actions connected to caring for the environment. The pre-school teachers also expressed that the children was not mature enough to learn about the process when waste separated garbage is recycled, and that the work with the subject therefore had been carried out on a lower level. The children however expressed knowledge that did not come straight from their actual every day life, but since dialogue about the subject did not seem to exist between pre-school teachers and children, the pre-school teachers appeared to have failed in making the learning meaningful and understandable for the children, from their knowledge, experiences and interests..

Most of the goats in the world exist in the developing countries where they are important in the meat industry. In Europe, goats are mostly kept for milk production although the interest for meat is growing. Goats have a thin carcass with only small amounts of intramuscular fat, which gives a lean meat. This thin subcutaneous fat cover can cause cold shortening when chilling the carcass. By using electrical stimulation cold shortening can be prevented.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of strategy for grouping calves into group pens with automatic milk-feeding systems on the calves' health and growth rate. The usefulness of changes in feeding behavior recorded by the computerized milk-feeder during periods of illness to identify calves with clinical diease was also studied. In the first experiment, 64 calves were moved in and out of group pens in a continuous way, while 46 calves were transferred into group pens until the the pen was considered "full". The calves in the latter groups were then held together until weaning. It was found that calves in the fixed groups grew approximately 100 g / day more compared to the calves in the dynamic groups. Signs of clinical respiratory disease were less frequent in this group, while the incidence of diarrhoea was slightly higher. In the second experiment health parameters, milk consumption and feeding behaviour was recorded daily for 46 calves.

The production costs have steadily increased within the construction industry during the 21st century. Voices are raised meaning that the construction industry is too unsuccessful in making the production more efficient and to develop it?s way of working. One way to deal with the production costs is to minimise the waste, with waste meaning activities that doesn?t add value to the finished product.

The objective of this work was to evaluate and compare three field methods for detection of mastitis, California Mastits Test (CMT), DeLaval cell counter DCC (DCC) and FMA2001 Farm Milk Analyzer (FMA2001). Furthermore, to investigate at what cell count level clinical symptoms of mastitis are seen, and finally to check if the clinical findings and cell counts could be related to bacteriological findings. DCC and FMA2001 are new analytic instruments to be used on dairy farms for detection of mastitis. CMT has been a widely used cow-side-test of milk quality in mastitis control efforts, but it cannot be used for estimating cell counts in scientific studies or investigations. Two hundred and eight quarter milk samples from 52 cows were analysed with DCC and CMT, and 168 of these samples with FMA2001. Microbiological examination was done on 38 milk samples with CMT scores of 4 and 5.

The production costs have steadily increased within the construction industry during the 21st century. Voices are raised meaning that the construction industry is too unsuccessful in making the production more efficient and to develop it?s way of working. One way to deal with the production costs is to minimise the waste, with waste meaning activities that doesn?t add value to the finished product.

The production costs have steadily increased within the construction industry during the 21st century. Voices are raised meaning that the construction industry is too unsuccessful in making the production more efficient and to develop it?s way of working. One way to deal with the production costs is to minimise the waste, with waste meaning activities that doesn?t add value to the finished product.

The Swedish Red Polled breed is threatened by extinction and there are only around 1100 animals left. The breed was popular in the early twentieth century, but since then the numbers have steadily decreased. The overall objective of this study was to find out whether there may be economic incentives for preserving the breed. The milk quality properties are of major importance in the production of dairy products. Therefore we would like to establish if the Swedish Red Polled breed carries favourable alleles at loci of relevance for milk quality, to potentially make the breed more interesting for milk production.

Today's society is facing major challenges. In order to reduce the climate impact fossil fuels should be replaced with fuels that do not contribute to the greenhouse effect. The growing population generates organic waste originating from industry and households so called organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW). Through anaerobic digestion, waste can be utilized to produce energy-rich methane gas. In this way, waste can be a resource instead of a burden on society.

Mastitis, inflammation in the udder tissue, caused by S. aureus is a big problem in dairy cattle production. It causes suffering for the cow and curing or replacing the infected cow is costly for the farmer. It is known that beef cattle also suffer from mastitis caused by S. aureus.

Käppala wastewater treatment plant situated on the island of Lidingö northeast of Stockholm is running a project during 2004 and 2005 with the purpose to map out the capacity of anaerobic digestion in the digesters that treat primary and excess sludge. The purpose of this thesis work, which is part of that project, was to characterize the present anaerobic digestion process and to investigate its capacity to treat other organic wastes such as restaurant waste and waste from water works. To decide the potential of both methane and biogas production from different substrates batch laboratory tests were carried out. To imitate the anaerobic digestion process at Käppala continuous tests with small scale reactors were carried out. These reactors were later fed with restaurant waste.The batch laboratory tests showed that primary sludge had a potential biogas and methane production of 0,62 and 0,35 Ndm3/g VS respectively after 40 days of digestion.

A totally mixed ration (TMR) is a mixture of all the necessary feed components for the cow. She will eat the exact same feed in every bite which will make the rumen pH more stable and always supply her with a constant proportion between roughage and concentrate. This will make it possible for the cow to eat more dry matter (DM) a day because the fibre requirements are fulfilled. If a part of the concentrate is given separated from the mixture it is called partly mixed rations (PMR) and is almost always used when using an automatic milking system (AMS). When using TMR and PMR it is important to have a high hygiene, be accurate when mixing the feed and to look after cows in a good and strict way. The aim of this study was to document different farms with PMR in an AMS to see which routines they have and how they are managing their production.