Horse keeping is gaining an increasing interest in Sweden. During 2004 to 2010 the number of horses increased with 10 - 20 %, and was estimated to be 362 700 in 2010. Julmyra Horse Center (JHC), situated in Heby municipality, is a gated community for people sharing a large interest for horses and a vision of a sustainable horse management has been formulated. This study evaluates how the horse keeping of today at JHC, and how an expansion of the horse keeping may affect the risk of enhanced phosphorus load to the nearby lake system Vansjön ? Nordsjön.

The possibility for plants to utilize phosphorus in soil is a prerequisite for conducting agricultural production, both small scale and professional. Spreading of phosphorus fertilizers and manure is therefore seen as a necessity in today's agriculture in order to achieve high yield. Manure management, livestock farming and manure storage could contribute to the eutrophication of lakes and rivers. For instance, when the ground becomes saturated, phosphorus leakage could be seen in surface runoff or in point sources resulting from inadequate manure storage management.In the municipality of Växjö there is still many bodies of water that do not reach the Swedish environmental water quality standard of "good ecological status". This thesis has therefore analyzed the manure management and storage on agricultural farms which may have contributed to eutrophication in the municipality.The method for this thesis was a literature study, a questionnaire survey with 820 receivers and a summary of issued inspection reports from 2013.The results highlight the ways in which agriculture may have contributed to the eutrophication of lakes and streams in the municipality of Växjö.

Mechanization of Swedish agriculture started in the beginning of the twentieth century, to be able to have more animals without raising the number of employers. The horse business has not by far kept up with these cost savings solutions. Cleaning out stables and feeding horses are the most time-consuming tasks in horse stables today. The most common way to clean out the stable is still by shovel and wheelbarrow. The clean out process can easily be mechanized through semi- permanently beds with movable walls between the boxes so that the litter can be removed by a tractor or a loader.

The aim of this work was to investigate possible risk factors for colic in horses, and to describe what horse owners can do to prevent this condition. The gastrointestinal system of the horse is constructed for continuous high fibre consumption for a period up to eighteen hours a day. Under those conditions, the continuous flow of digesta stimulates gut motility so that the intestines move constantly. When the diet is changed rapidly and the horse is being fed high rations of concentrates each day, the risk of getting colic is higher compared to when consuming less concentrates and giving the horse a stable diet. Lack or absence of access to water and restricted allowance to move freely every day increases the risk of colic. Changed management practices and decreased activity contributes to increased risks, as well as other critical risk factors such as breed, season and age combined with rapidly changed management. More knowledge and education is required of the horse owners about feed requirements in the horse, management routines and rapidly changed activity..

This thesis was performed at SverigeGrepen AB. SverigeGrepen is a company that hasone product on the market; a manure fork that is designed to be used for mucking inshavings or peat. The aim of this thesis was to develop a new manure fork that isadapted to be used in straw.The development started with a pilot study where experience of mucking wascollected to be able to understand what and why certain characteristics are importantfor the function and use of the manure fork.A basic concept was developed where the main function was fulfilled, which meantthat a separation between dung and straw could be performed in a way that wasbeneficial for the user.The work resulted in four concepts of how a manure fork could be used in the strawthat can be designed and constructed. The conclusion that the work gave was that allconcepts met the main requirements required by a manure fork to use in straw.However, concept four provides a good visual impression, while its benefits areassumed to be important qualities..

Manure evaluation has been suggested as a cheap, fast and easy method which can give information about the digestibility of the ration, the function of the rumen, where in the gastrointestinal tract the feed is digested and the health of the cow. An experiment was conducted to study how manure evaluation could be used as a management tool in Swedish Dairy farming. Manure was collected from cows on Kungsängen Research Station and from 9 other farms. The manure samples were analysed for dry matter, ash, starch, pH-value and particle size (wet sieved). Also, the consistency of the manure was determined on a 5-point scale and the colour and smell were noticed. Penn State Forage Particle Separator was used for determining the particle size of the roughage.

The horse is an animal that often becomes humanized. Despite domestication, the horse still has a need to interact with other horses, be able to move for the most of the day, and being able to graze. If these needs cannot be fulfilled, the horse can be negatively affected and develop abnormal behaviours. An example of abnormal behaviours is weaving; the horse performs a swinging motion in the front area of the body during a long time. This literature review aims to investigate how different stabling forms (box/stall) affect the incidence of weaving, and also how this behaviour can be prevented or limited.

In this degree project we wanted to investigate if there are any possibilities to get a higher income from grain growing by giving the grain to hens instead of selling it. We were also wondering if the manure has any value or if it only cost the egg producer money. If the egg producer cultivate his own grain and is able to store it in layer is there quite much money to earn. Expensive pasture makes it profitability to pay up to 1,35 Swedish crowns for a kilo of wheat. In our calculating we?ve used calculation from the company Lantmännen.

Eutrophication was recognized in the early 1900's and results in severe algal blooms, increased biomass production and eventually leads to an altered ecosystem. In Mälardalen we find the most eutrophic lakes. Most of the applied phosphorus and nitrogen into seas and oceans comes from agriculture, and the nutrients losses are affected by local weather conditions and soil type. Guidelines for storage and distribution of manure were introduced in the 80s, and the rules were strengthened January 1, 2010. Localities and previous county administrations can whether there are special reasons, grant an exemption for manure application during winter-periods despite the current ban.In this essay I have examined how many exemptions of manure application that has been granted at the Sagån river, and what implications it has for the eutrophication of Lake Mälaren.

This work focuses on the relation between human and animals and especially on the relation between horses and human. I have brought up the human och horse relationsship, today, and in history and wrote about the behaviour of the horse. Some older studies with human and animal interaction, including animals like dog and cattle are discussed. I have also discussed physiological parameters that might influence the bond and the interaction between human and horse and some critical aspects concerning the methodology when studying this kind of physiology. The purpose of the experimental study was to analyze if common management routines and grooming of horses increases horses interest in making contact with humans. Many horse owners feel that they have a good connection with their horse and factors that can influence the relationsship could be physical contact, feeding or some challange that make the horse trust the human.

The purpose of this degree project is to investigate how horse keepers reasons about horse keeping and how the horse keeping looks like today. It is interesting to compare modern horse keeping with ancien recommendations and how the horses were kept then to understand how much in the horse keeping today that is based on traditions instead of research and science. The degree project was based on data from interviews of 52 horse keepers in five different municipalities. All interviews have been based from the same questionaire about how there horses are kept today, what they think about different housing systems, how they think horses will be housed in the future and what problems they think are the biggest in horse keeping today. The results shows that single boxes indoors are the most frequently used housing system today.

SUMMARYThe Swedish laws of animal welfare emphasize the social needs of the horse but nothing is said about how to fulfill this. Though there are few studies done in this subject it can be difficult to understand if the needs are fulfilled. The purpose of this study was to learn more about the horse?s social needs in box stable and to increase other people?s knowledge and understanding of the horse behavior to increase the welfare of the stabled horse. The questions where: How does the horse choose to place itself depending on what horse is next to it? How many attempts does the horse do to take contact and nose contact with the horse next to it? How does the box design affect the horse behavior?22Eight horses were videotaped during 24 nights.

The Baltic Sea is threatened by eutrophication that largely is due to nutrient leaching from farmland within the catchment area. To solve this problem the surrounding countries cooperate within various configurations such as HELCOM and the EU-financed project Baltic Compass. Poor manure management in Russia has been discussed frequently the last couple of years. A literature review of different types of reports and legal acts is the core of this degree project which has been performed in connection to two ongoing research projects financed by EU (Baltic Compass) and SIDA. It is supplemented with interviews with Swedish agricultural consultants and travel reports from two occasions when I had the opportunity to discuss with Russians active within the agricultural sector. Different hypotheses were investigated and discussed. The environmental debate in Russia is quiet and there is a widespread approach that economic profit always trumps environmental concern ? a Soviet heritage that influence the Russian agriculture considerably. The Russian legal acts on stable manure management focus mainly on sanitary questions and only secondary on nutrient leaching.

The purpose of this paper is to find out which characteristics the female and male characters have in five selected horse books in children's literature. I have analyzed five horse books by Professor Maria Nikolajeva?s gender roles schedule. I have chosen to do a qualitative text analysis and the questions I chose to ask for the books are: Which characteristics does the girls and the boys have in the selected horse books according to Nikolajeva?s gender chart? What is the relationship between the main characters and the horse/horses according to the theories of Backman? What does the typical horse book look like today? What I come to conclusion in my paper is that all the horse books I analyzed have female main characters, and the girls in these books about horses take a lot of space and demonstrate themselves strong.

The purpose of this essay was to try to understand the relationship between the horse and man during the last part of the Iron Age and trough out the Medieval Age. To be able to get a result I investigated the horse's tending, work within agriculture, riding, warfare, breeding, to stable horses, oxen, sports and hunting, eating of the horse and age at slaughter and more. The results showed that the horse's position changed from the later part of the Iron Age throughout the Medieval Ages and in different ways for, respectively, the elite as for the peasant culture..