Purpose There are almost infinite numbers of ways to build dairy farms in Sweden. When building a new Free stall barn you have the possibility to affect both working environment and animal welfare for many years to come. The construction costs are influenced by which type of barn that is built and what functions it contains, for example one can predict that automatic milking systems are more expensive to integrate than milking parlours. But what is the real cost of today for the construction of Free stall barns with milking centres and how is it affected by construction methods and functions? Is the labour time influenced by the building costs? These are some of the questions this report will try to answer.

This thesis is focused on what impact stall confinement has on a horse?s mental and physical welfare. It was of great interest to get a gathered picture of how Swedish horseowners had experienced having their horses in stall confinement. A survey study was conducted to achieve this. The survey included twelve questions which for example investigated the horses? age at the time of stall confinement, the length of stall confinement and their sexes.

As a leisure time pedagogue I find it hard to have an insight into what children are playing, and how they play when it comes to free play. My experience is that in some free play, conflicts arise, which reveal hierarchies and power structures containing violations, whereas other occasions of free play suddenly come to an end as the pedagogue interferes. In this essay I investigate my responsibility as a leisure time pedagogue during children´s free play, based on two differing play situations. I also investigate the play as a phenomenon by looking into previous research on children?s play and development psychology.

To reconstruct a building is a long-term investment for farmers and it is important that people with different qualifications are involved at an early stage for making the system adapted to the animals as well the animal keeper. Therefore, ethologists who can contribute with their expertise are needed to design the system and get it to function well for the animals.A Swedish farmer who planned to rebuild her stall for tied dairy cattle to a loose-housing system for recruitment heifers for milk production asked me as an ethologist to find a system which can be fit to her existing tie-stall barn for 30 dairy cows, considering the animal needs in terms of movement, social interactions and play behaviors, and to theoretically compare the system with other systems with respect to the behaviors mentioned.The theoretical comparison between different systems was made through a scientific literature review.In agreement with the animal keeper I set out to fit a system with feeding cubicles, a system with cubicles and a system with deep straw bedding to the barn. After measurements were taken and preliminary drawings were outlined it was found that only the feeding cubicle system was possible to fit to the barn.The space provided will limit the animals to perform some playing behaviors. To decrease aggressive interactions between animals even thought a limiting area it is possible to provide partitions between resources animals compete around to prevent that more than one animal can get success to the resource at a particular place at one time. To increase the animal movement in the system the water trays were moved to the outer wall instead of kept in contact with the stalls.Although this report provides guidelines for rebuilding, other competences regarding building construction and a pre-test of the suggested building solution according to Swedish legislation are needed before the rebuilding can start.The results are directed mainly to the owner of the barn, but the literature review can be used by other cattle farmers and might bring increased understanding of the possible effects of different building solution on the animals..

The resting area is the most important place in the barn for the dairy cow, sometimes called the heart of the free stall system. Inadequate design of the lying area, and lack of or poor quality of bedding materials may reduce the hygiene of the stall. Poor management regarding the cleanliness of the resting area may lead to poor animal hygiene and increased bacterial growth. This in turn will lead to increased risk for environmental mastitis as well as impairing milk quality through contamination with spores. In this literature study the most commonly used bedding materials; straw, sawdust, wood shavings, clean sand, recycled sand, peat and recycled manure solids, are compared to one another with regards to their ability to resist bacterial growth. Effects of adding hydrated lime to bedding materials have also been studied. Most bacteria need humidity and prefer a quite high water activity to be able to grow.

The aim of this study is to increase knowledge and understanding of free play or free fun time importance for children of age around five years in preschool, in order to promote children?s development and learning. The focus was on exploring and better understanding of teacher?s and educators? approach to the free fun play time as a tool in their educational work, and also about their own role in this context as well as analyzing of forms, rules and structures spontaneously created by groups of children having free play fun time. Another important moment of this study was to give more light on approaches to this issue in education theories by Piaget, Vygotsky and Freud among others.As to the practical experimental part of the study it has been performed at a preschool and kindergarten in a suburb at the outskirts of Stockholm, with four employed educators there and with groups of children of age around five.

In this empirical study I have investigated how preschool teachers relate to the free play at the preschool. At the same time I have investigated how the free play is adapted into everyday practice in the preschool. Previous research shows that children process what they experienced in the free play. The child retrieves content to play with through things they have experienced, such as family life, preschool and so on. To play, grow and continue, it is important that free play may take place and space in the daily activities at the preschool.

This social psychological qualitative study demonstrate how the children?s play begin and what significant important it has in the child?s identity progress. The main subject in this social- psychological study is the child?s self and how through imagination, creativity and spontaneity the human?s personal identity is discovered. However the study is based upon the children?s plays in day- care, the children whom are being objects for the study are from 3-6 years old.

The objective of this thesis was to get more knowledge before an alternation of generations. In theses I have chose to make two drawings, one for dairy cows and one for cattle rearing. The drawings are made for a future alternation of generations at my parental home in the province Dalarna. The results are made out of educational visits at different farms and literature investigations. Those dairy farms who I visited had different milking system at each farm and the cattle farm I visited had beef production. The farms are placed in the middle and south of Sweden. At 1998 the Swedish Board of Agriculture decided to change the stall breadth and stall length and the result of this is that many farmers had to rebuild their cattle- and dairy buildings or end farming..

The aim of this study is to describe successful strategies to include children in free play activities at the preschool. The methods that pedagogues use to act and work with excluded children will be examined. To get answers to my questions I have conducted interviews with five pedagogues in four preschools. During interviews they mention two different approaches to encourage free play activity. One way was to participate and play along with the children.

AbstractGroup processes within the free play- in a socialpsychology perspective In our socialpsychology study we have demonstrated how children?s free play is by observing 2-5 years old children in preschool. We have also interviewed two preschool teachers. The major subject in this study is how children?s group processes expresses in their free play.

Free play is a term that often common in educational activities. The definition of the term is difficult, but it is about the children themselves decides the scope, content and process in their play. On an after-school, this may mean that it is the children are given the opportunity to freely choose their own activity in the leisure constraints. Free play can be an alternative to other, more controlled activities where adults control framework. The purpose of this study is to investigate the variations in how some children perceive and experience the phenomenon of free play in the after-school and how the children perceive the teacher´s role in the free game.

The purpose of this thesis is to study five pedagogue?s view of the free play and their view of the importance of the free play for children´s learning and development. I have chosen to use a qualitative research method in the form of interviews with five pedagogue´s from a preschool. The main research questions asked were:What have the pedagogues of view on the free play? How important believe the pedagogue that the free play is for children?s learning and development? What has emerged in the study is that educators have a positive view of the free play. They believed that the free play is important for children´s skills.

SummaryI have a great interest in bouzoukis and since I, during my education in guitar making, mainly have focused on building bouzoukis and other traditional folk instruments, I have chosen the bouzouki as the object of my degree project.In connection to the making of these instruments, I started to consider the construction of the bouzouki and why the bouzouki has such a characteristic sound.One of my theories is based on the fact that most bouzoukis are made with floating bridges instead of glued pinbridges. Do these types of bridges differ from each other tonally and if so, how much and in what way?To receive answers to my questions, I have built two identical bouzoukis with different types of bridges, one with a glued pinbridge and one with a floating bridge. I have been very precise in the making of these instruments, giving them the exact same dimensions and using material from the same piece of wood. This to make sure that the instruments should be as exactly alike as possible.After finishing the making of the bouzoukis, I arranged for a sound test where I let musicians play and listen to the instruments.

Detta examensarbete handlar främst om hållfasthet hos boxmaterial men också om planeringen av boxar i stall. Bakgrunden till arbetet ligger i att ridsporten är en stor sport i Sverige vilket gör att det även finns många stall med varierande kvalitet. I många av dessa behöver materialet i boxarna bytas och boxarna behöver planeras om för att bli större. Fyra olika material har undersökts och jämförts med avseende på deras hållfasthet, kostnad och underhåll. Hållfasthetstest utfördes på de fyra materialen genom att energinivån för hästspark undersöktes.