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The demand för Swedish pork meat is increasing every day. This leads to agricultural farming having to develop as an industry, with larger and more rationalised units to make the farming more effective and to raise the financial profit. The consequence of this is that it affects the animals when their surroundings become more industrial. The pig´s natural behaviour becomes restricted by the limitations of the facilities, which leads to them becoming understimulated.   Helena Kummel, a teacher at Munkagård upper secondary school and also an educated animal inspector has developed a prototype that could possibly replace the pig´s natural rooting behaviour inside the barn. The porpuse of this report is to study "bökboxen" in the gilts´actual living enviroment, through qualitative- and quantitative analysis. The observation was performed when the pigs were between eight to sixteen weeks of age.   Our results from the qualitative analysis and the quantitative analysis show that the use of bökboxen increased in the intervention group during the observation. Stimulation in the beginning of a pig´s life can prevent the tendency to develop stereotypical behaviour. We believe that bökboxen can have a positive result on pig´s stereotypical behaviour, but that the contraption still is not enough to stimulate all of the pig´s natural behaviour. Our conclusion is that further research is needed in later periods of the lives of the intervention group, to see if "bökboxen" makes a difference. / Efterfrågan på svenskt fläskkött ökar allt mer. Detta medför att jordbruket måste utvecklas som industri, mot större och mer rationellt organiserade enheter med inriktning på hur man kan effektivisera för att gå med ekonomisk vinning. Konsekvenerna av detta är att djuren drabbas då omgivningsmiljön blir mer industriell. Grisarna blir understimulerade av den begränsade omgivningen eftersom deras naturliga beteenden inskränks, vilket i sin tur leder till stereotypa beteenden.   Helena Kummel, lärare på Munkagårdsgymnasiet och utbildad djurskyddsinspektör, har utvecklat en prototyp som kan stimulera och möjliggöra grisarnas naturliga bökande inne i ladugården. I detta examensarbete kommer den benämnas som "bökboxen". Examensarbetets syfte var att studera bökboxen i ett reelt sammanhang hos gyltorna. Bökboxen placerades i kätten hos 12 grisar. Grisarnas beteende observerades löpande från 8 veckor till 16 veckors ålder. Observationen analyserades dels kvalitativt, dels kvantitativt. Resultatet visade att användandet av bökboxen ökade hos interventionsgruppen under observationsstudierna. I den kvalitativa analysen kodades anteckningarna, dessa koder fördes samman till kategorier utifrån beteenden. En stimulerande uppväxt kan förhindra tendenserna till att utveckla stereotypa beteenden, vilket vi tycker att bökboxen genererat till. Vi anser dock att bökboxen inte är tillräcklig för att stimulera alla grisens beteenden men det är ett steg i rätt riktning. Vidare forskning behövs i en senare period av interventionsgruppens liv för att se om ökboxen gjort någon skillnad.

Developed model for easier animal welfare assessment- with examples from dairy cows in loose housing Animals in captivity are completely dependent on human care. If captive animals are prevented from exhibiting their natural behavior, they may suffer. Animal welfare inspectors, who insure that the animal welfare legislation is followed, use a checklist to assess the situation in the husbandry. This checklist contains only two levels of assessment, which may result in a lack of detail in the assessment of the husbandry. The objective of this report was to develop a more detailed model that provides an overview of the situation in husbandry. The developed model was customized for dairy cows in loose housing with information from the animal welfare legislation, scientific results and advice from experts, and was then tested in four husbandries for dairy cows. The model was divided into five categories for which the assessment parameters were adapted. A rating scale with different colors and scores was developed to assess different qualities of husbandries and a control help text was made to facilitate the assessment. To illustrate the results they were placed in a pie chart. The major conclusion of this report is that a model like this works very well when the details of animal husbandry shall be shown. Besides that, a rating scale with more levels than those in the current checklist is necessary to develop an accurate overview of animal husbandries. A model like this can help the animal welfare inspectors to distinguish different types of animal keepers and thus optimize inspection procedures.

<p>Environmental stress has shown to affect both the exposed individuals and the development of their offspring. Generally, it is thought that the stressed organism responds to stress by trying to adapt to it. This thesis investigates possible evolutionary consequences of cross-generational transmissions of stress, where the parent has been stressed but the offspring has not. In two studies we have exposed chicken parents of different breeds to an unpredictable circadian light rhythm, to investigate the influence of genetic background on the transmission of behaviour and patterns of genome-wide gene expression across generations. In Paper I, we can show that the domesticated chicken, by means of epigenetic factors, transmit their behaviours as well as their gene expression profiles to their offspring to a higher extent than their wild ancestor, the red junglefowl. Furthermore, in Paper II, even though the offspring never experienced the stress or had any contact with their stressed parents, they seemed to have adapted to it, which suggests that the parents might have prepared (or pre-adapted) them for living in the unpredictable environment. Additionally, eggs of stressed hens showed increased levels of estradiol that might have affected gene expression of specific immune genes, which were up-regulated in the offspring of stressed parents. It is possible that the traditional distinction between stress responses and evolutionary adaptation may be reevaluated, since our results indicate that they could be parts of the same evolutionary event.</p>