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.

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.

Cryptosporidium parvum is a protozoan parasite causing diarrhoea in many different animal species including cattle and man. It is an important enteric pathogen in neonatal calves and it is the second most common pathogen found in diarrhoeic calves in Sweden. Subclinically infected adult cattle have, in international studies, been shown to shed a low number of oocysts in faeces and this has been recognised as a potential source of infection for new-born calves. The detection methods used for diagnostic purposes are based on microscopic investigation of faecal smears. These methods have a fairly low sensitivity and samples from subclinically infected cattle have to be concentrated before analysis.

In modern dairy production, the newborn calf generally is separated from its mother and put in a single pen for some time before it is introduced to group housing. Group housing is becoming more and more common because it saves the farmer a lot of valuable time. Even thought group housing has a lot of benefits it is often associated with a higher morbidity and mortality in the young calves. Therefore, knowing the optimal way to use the group pen lies in many farmers? interests and the importance of different factors such as the optimal age of introduction is important to evaluate. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of age at introduction to group housing on the health of the calves in the group pen.

Many dairy farms doesn?t keep their bull calves and cross cow calves, they sell them to breeders instead of raising them their self. It should be possible for the dairy farmers to do it them self?s. There is also a possibility to bread one calf from the cross heifers. The purpose of the investigation was to see if there is any economic possibility to breed beef cattle. I have used the same sample farm trough the hole study, because it would be easier to fallow the study.

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.

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.

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 this study, 29 calves were dehorned by heat cauterisation at the age of 1 to 8 weeks. Before the procedure, the calves were given local anaesthetic but were not sedated. In connection with the dehorning, 14 calves were given the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) meloxicam and 15 calves were given placebo. During the following three days behavioural studies were performed to investigate if the different treatments had any effect on the calves´ postoperative behaviour. Head shakes, head rubs, kicks and ear flicks were studied, as earlier studies have shown that an increase in these behavioural patterns suggests postoperative pain.

The cattle production in the world has been questioned in Sweden due to its negative impacts on the environment. The use of imported soya bean meal as a protein feed for Swedish cattle results in the cutting of rainforest and an extensive use of pesticides in the countries were the soya beans are produced. As a consequence, the environmental impacts caused by cattle production increases. A production of protein feeds in Sweden would decrease the transportations and the cutting of rainforest. For organic beef producers the possibility to produce home-grown protein feeds is important since organic protein feeds can be difficult to obtain in another way.

The bacterium Lactobacillus reuteri, which natural habitat is in the intestine of mammals and birds, uses glycerol as a substrate for production of the antimicrobial compound reuterin. Glycerol has been shown to decrease the number of Escherichia coli in human feces and it is believed to be due to in situ production of reuterin. E. coli belongs to the large family of Enterobacteriaceae, naturally occurring in the intestine, and pathogenic strains of E. coli have been shown to be one of several bacteria causing diarrhoea in calves.

When beef calves are weaned abruptly at 5 to 6 months of age this triggers a strong stress reaction, since the animals have not yet untied the bonds to their mothers or stopped suckling. This is displayed as extensive vocalization and restlessness. Attempts to diminish the negative effects of weaning on sucking calves have been showing varying results. The study presented here emanates from the observation that when calves are weaned without human interference they are only prevented from suckling, but are still allowed to have social contacts with their mothers. The hypothesis was that calves weaned in two steps would be calmer, gain more weight, and be healthier than animals that were abruptly weaned. To investigate this, 15 calves where weaned in two stages (Group 2), by fitting the calves with nose tags that prevented them from suckling during 5 days prior to the separation of the cows and calves.

To turn the dairy heifers out on pasture is the most natural way for the cattle to get feed. At the same time it is cheap and if it is right treated a feed of high nutritive value. The problem today is to get dairy heifers to grow enough when they are grazing at natural pasture for the entire summer. Therefore, the opinions differ whether pasture is a resource or a problem. The increasing interest of pasture production is due to the fact that you can receive grants for preserving valuable natural assets and cultural landscape elements in the pasture land. A high grazing pressure is necessary to preserve an open landscape and a great variety of species. In the same time the heifers have to supply their nutritive needs in order to grow and be large enough to show heat and be pregnant in right time to calve with a sufficient body size and at an economically right age. This paper includes a literature review on natural pasture, pasture production, and growth of dairy heifers together with own interviews with dairy farmers about their point of view to the pasture husbandry on the farms, how they plan for pasture, look after natural pasture, treatment areas and take care of the calves and heifers. The results indicate that the time it takes and the demanded work are the biggest factors to how and why the farmers do as they do..

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.

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.