Swedish agriculture stands in front of big changes the whole time. As a milking producer you have to adapt and develop the company to these changes and find the best solution. This potential is easy to find if you compare your company with other similar companies. Labour cost is the biggest cost in milking production after the cost for food. Today it is rather easy to measure how many hours per cow different system of cow houses needs, but we do not know so much about how many hours it takes to breed a Calf. To learn more about the labour time with the calves during the first time after the Calf was born, I made time studies on five different farms with Calf hutches, automatic milk system, large Calf boxes, and smaller Calf boxes with teat buckets.

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.

In order to investigate if the KRAV-regulations have any effects on the health and welfare of calves, KRAV-affiliated farms were compared to conventional farms with respect to Calf management and outcome. The dairy Calf has had a low economical impact during history. Even today the value of the Calf is low and a lot of calves have a poor health status. The Calf breeding is built on tradition and on the fact, that cheap antibiotics have made it possible to ignore, the recommendations about good hygiene in the Calf?s environment.

In order to optimize Calf welfare and health it is important to know the behavior of cattle in free ranging conditions. When the cow is about to give birth to a Calf she will leave the heard about 12 hours before. It is then rather obvious that isolating the cow about calving time in a single pen is imitating the cows? natural behavior. To save space and minimize building cost it?s common that the farmers build calving pens for four of five cows especially at larger farms.

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 purpose of this literature review was to investigate how the rearing systems influence the behaviour of dairy calves. Calves are social animals that form groups within the herd where play and social licking between calves are important social activities. Suckling is a complex behaviour and essential for the Calf's survival. In the modern rearing systems the Calf is usually separated from its mother soon after birth. Calves are then kept in individual pens, group pens or, more rarely, with a foster cow.

SammanfattningSyftet med studien var att undersöka om det fanns någon skillnad i muskelaktivitet ivadmuskulaturen när olika eller inget vadskydd användes vid vadpress. Jämförelsegjordes mellan vadskydd (A), stickat av ett modifierat polyolefingarn och ett tillstickningen identiskt och utseende näst intill identiskt vadskydd (B) av polyamid,samt utan vadskydd.Testgruppen bestod av 13 män från militärhögskolan i Halmstad. Testpersonernagenomförde vadpress i smithmaskin* på en belastning av 50% av 1RM*.Muskelaktiviteten mättes med hjälp av sEMG* och tre mätningar per persongenomfördes. Det första utan vadskydd, andra med vadskydd A och det tredje medvadskydd B. Resultaten visade ingen signifikant skillnad i muskelaktivitet mellan användandet avvadskydd A och vadskydd B eller mellan vadskydd A och utan vadskydd.Mätmetoden sEMG är känslig och kan ha gett missvisande resultat. Fler studierbehöver göras dels angående skillnad i muskelaktivitet och dels för att testavadskyddens eventuella andra egenskaper, positiva eller negativa.

Good feeding practices are a basic aspect of good Calf health. During the Calf's first few months the Calf is fed with purchased milk replacer or raw milk straight from the cow. On all farms, it will be a surplus of milk that may not be delivered to the dairy for various reasons. Milk that may not be supplied to the dairy includes colostrum and milk with unnormal properties, including milk from cows suffering from mastitis. This study investigated the possibility of improving the milk by pasteurization in order to secure its use as feed for calves and thereby obtain an improved Calf health.

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.

Several factors affect the heifer´s growth and development, the newborn Calf´s feeding of co-lostrum during its first hours of life is one important factor. The colostrum contains higher amount of immunoglobulins and insulin growth factors compared to matured milk. A high intake of immunoglobulins from colostrum results in a high blood concentration of immuno-globulins until the age of eight months. This leads to a lower incidence of diseases that can affect the growth and development negatively. Diarrhea is the most common disease in calves younger than 30 days.

The Calf extrator?s function has been studied, through measuring traction and how this varies in different situations, in comparison with corresponding manual traction situations. This was done against the background that excessive force at assisted calvings at dystocia can mean life threatening damages on the Calf such as grave acidosis, vertebral fractures, femur fractures and rib fractures. The Calf extractor has earlier been measured to pull with greater force than the established maximum force of ?two strong men?.

The purpose of this study was to find out if motion movements, e.g. number of lying bouts and lying time with a registered activity monitoring sensor can detect an impending calving and thereby be used as a measure and an indicator for an upcoming calving. For this, automatically step sensors were used and were attached to one of the cows? hind leg. The sensor registered the individual step and movement activity of the cow.

A cattle producer that buys calves that are younger than six months to the herd should have a starter stable to prevent infection spreading in the herd. According to the Swedish animal welfare regulation there has to be a starter stable if more than 50 calves that are younger than four months are bought in yearly to the herd. The aim of the study was to improve the knowledge about bovine buildings and management of starter stables to obtain optimal weight gain and health of the calves. The hypothesis 1) The younger the calves are when purchased, the higher the Calf mortality and 2) Purchasing calves from a high number of herds involves a higher risk of Calf health problems and Calf mortality were tested in the study. The objective of the study was to give advices by way of presenting ideal solutions of how a starter stable should be constructed and managed. A field study was done during June to September 2008 to collect knowledge and experience from existing starter stables.

The aim for this study was to investigate if it is less stressful for cow and calves in loose housing systems when separation is made so they can see and touch each other (Physical Contact-PC) instead of just hearing each other (Hearing Contact-HC). The behavior of eight cow- Calf pairs (n=4 pairs per treatment) on an ecological dairy farm with cubicle housing were studied for four hours directly after separation and four hours the day after separation. The first four cows that gave birth were used for treatment PC, and the following four cows that gave birth were used for treatment HC. The only selection criteria used was that both cow and Calf were healthy. Separation took place 3-4 days after birth and the calves were put separately in two different pens while the mothers were let loose into the cubicle system.

Difficult calvings and stillbirths are problems in Swedish dairy production that result in large expenses for the farmers and welfare issues concerning the animals. A common opinion is that the live weight of SRB and SLB is increasing, and whether increased weights have caused the increase in calving problems has been discussed. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the relative birth weight (Calf/cow) and calving difficulty and stillbirth, respectively. The importance of breed and parity for the relative weight has been investigated, and comparisons with previous studies have been made to evaluate whether the relative weight has changed over the last decades or not. The study was based on 807 calvings, registered during the period 1993-2003 in the experimental dairy herd of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Jälla).