Department of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences

Research og the month - Cows chew all day long

Ruminants have the amazing ability to convert plant matter without nutritional value for humans to highly valued foods such as meat and milk. The vast majority of Norway’s farmland is only suitable for grass production. We are usually not aware of how dependent we are on the rumen, with its bacteria, protozoa and fungi all working hard to utilise nutrients in the ingested plant matter.

In a recent PhD thesis at the Department of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences, Merha Zerabruk from Ethiopia mapped and described the genetic diversity of several Ethiopian cattle breeds. Some of the breeds, originating from a region of Ethiopia with little-known genetic resources, have previously not been described in the literature. Merha Zerabruk’s work aimed to describe these breeds as important genetic resources for the development of livestock husbandry in Northern Ethiopia.

Although Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) for humans with mental disorders has been well documented with pets, there is almost a complete lack of controlled studies of farm animals as therapeutic agents for psychiatric patients. The main aim of this doctoral project was to examine effects on self-efficacy, coping ability, quality of life, anxiety and depression of a three-month intervention with farm animals among adult psychiatric patients. The results indicate that animal-assisted therapy had beneficial effects when used as a supplement to ordinary therapeutical treatment, especially for patients with affective disorders.