Improved Milk Production from Supplementation of Swamp Buffalo with Molasses Nutrient Blocks Containing 10% Urea

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Editor and Authors,

I send you my review about the paper “Is Improved Milk Production from Supplementation of Buffalo with Molasses Nutrient Blocks Containing 10% Urea, a Greenhouse Gas Emissions Mitigation Strategy?”.

The paper was aimed to examined the milk yields and body condition scores of buffalo supplemented with molasses containing various nutrient, among witch urea.

The paper is well written and, despite it is little innovative, in my opinion it result suitable for publication, nevertheless it should needs of some minor revisions that I reported below.

The title of the paper, to facilitate reading, it should be better to avoid the questions, especially in the title. For this reason I suggest to change the title of the paper in a statement.

The introduction is complete and well written, however, show some lacks.

The originality of the paper, in fact, should be better explained. To this aim, I suggest to stress the lack of the knowledge of the bibliography and as this paper can reduce this lacks.

Moreover, to facilitate reading, at lines 33, 36 and 38 it should be better to replace the “~” with the words “about” or “approximately”.

The experimental design and the statistical analysis results adequate to the aim.

Moreover, also the results, in addition to being well presented and discussed, result adequate to support the aim of the paper, however, in the tables 3,4, 5 and 6 should be reported a column with the level of the significant of the differences (P-value).

Furthermore, also in the legend of the figures it should be better to report the level of the significant of the differences (P-value).

Finally, to facilitate comprehension of the paper by the reader the conclusions should be written in a their chapter.

Author Response

Thankyou for the positive comments about our paper and your efforts in reviewing it. We address all the points raised as follows. 

The title has been changed to a statement and remove the question of GHG mitigation.

This enterprise is certainly innovative in this country with this species in the smallholder communities, using animals for milk that have never before been used for such production, and offering improved incomes and human nutrition for all involved, especially when enhanced by an innovative form of molasses block production.  However, the major innovation is the extremely high quality of these UMMBs that due to manufacturing developments, are delivering superior productivity gains than have been previously recorded.

Accordingly, the originality of the paper is now better explained, with modifications to the Abstract and Discussion.

Lines 33, 36 and and 38 have been amended to remove the '~'. 

In Tables 3, 4 and 5, it was purposively intended that to keep these tables easier to read, a significance column would be avoided by addition of a superscript 'A' and/or 'B' to the data, with the following addendum: '^A,B: Means sharing the same superscript on a Month are not significantly different (P > 0.05). Our preference is to retain these tables as they are.

Further, with the levels of significance clearly demonstrable in the tables and described in the text, it is preferred to not to clutter the figures with significance, particularly as the error bars are clearly demarcated.

The concluding sentences to both the Abstract and the Discussion have been rewritten to emphasize the increasing evidence now accumulating, that these innovative high quality UMMB's can precipitate the adoption and scale-out of the required  multi-intervention strategy for improved smallholder livestock farming efficiency.  

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is a valuable work dealing with issues that are both currently relevant and important, especially for dairy farms. I would question the authors’ inclusion of the subject of greenhouse gas emissions in the title and objective of the study. The study does not deal directly with this issue, and the authors did not conduct any tests in this regard, but only determined how the additive affects the milk yield and body condition of animals. Therefore in my opinion the title and objective of the study should be changed.

An important issue for farms producing cheese is the composition of milk, especially protein content, because it influences the yield of cheese produced from a unit of milk. Therefore it is important to determine how the additive affects the chemical composition of milk.

Author Response

Thank you for your efforts and positive comments in the review of our paper.

The concern with the focus on GHGe is noted and the title has been changed to remove this. However, as GHGe has become a key issue for the reputation and sustainability of large ruminant-derived foods, we do feel it appropriate to draw attention to this issue, particularly where a simple intervention can improve efficiencies by up to 31%! 

We believe the arguments around this issue of production efficiency are well explained in the manuscript and presentation of actual emissions data in this study are unnecessary to justify inclusion of this issue in the paper. In fact, the reduction of theoretical GHGe through improved production efficiency is a major motivation for our conducting this work in Laos, as the best GHGe gains are made in inefficient production systems. Please note that this paper continues to expand this theme, as presented in our recently published paper on urea molasses blocks in improving beef production efficiencies in Laos (references 13, 14 & 15). 

We note the suggestion that protein content be measured. This was not done  during the study as this was a recent 'start-up' commercial buffalo dairy and our priority was obtaining milk production and BCS data. Please note that future trials are currently being planned where milk composition data can be determined.  

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

 

with the compliments of this reviewer. Although I am not working with buffalos, I consider your study well designed and the paper was written well. So I have very view comments and recommandations. You use quite a lot of abbreviations and e.g. line 27 GHG for the first time without explanation. Please check your paper for that very carefully   

Author Response

Thankyou for your efforts and positive comments in reviewing our paper.

We note your concern with abbreviations, although we have only used those that are now commonly used and have become conventional in the literature of this applied animal science.

We have now inserted 'greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe)' in the abstract as suggested. 

Reviewer 4 Report

The title of the paper does not correspond to the research as the research did not include the determination of GHG emissions. Namely, it is generally known that by increasing productivity (in this case milk) per head, or generally by increasing production efficiency in livestock, the average GHG emission per kg of product produced (in this case milk) decreases. 
Furthermore, the material and methods do not clearly indicate the difference between C1 and C2 treatments? The aredale of lactation of the studied buffaloes is also not clearly indicated (because parity is an important factor in the milk yield of animals, in general).
The title of Table 6 does not match the contents of the table.

Author Response

Thankyou for your efforts in reviewing our paper. 

We note your concern that the title of the paper includes a focus on GHGe and that we have not presented emissions data. We have now adjusted the title as requested.

However, mitigation of GHGe is now such an important issue for the sustainability of large ruminant derived food production. A finding that demonstrates a potential increased efficiency of 31% is very important, as it can offer a potential strategy for more widespread amelioration of GHGe through the use of innovative UMMB technology. This preliminary study work is supportive of this strategy. 

There were no differences between the C1 and C2 groups, other than they were housed in separated pens and that animals from C2 were removed from milking preferentially when the demand for milk declined. This has now been more clearly explained in the materials and Methods.

The matching of animals as described, included the stage of lactation, described as 'established'. The bracketed word (mid)' has been inserted to improved clarity.

We do not agree that the title of Table 6 is erroneous. It clearly indicates that we combined the the C1 and C2 Treatment groups for comparison with the control group, as per:

Table 6. Model-based mean milk production (kg) ± standard error for buffalo in the control and combined treatments group across the study period.

 

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Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors, I found this corrected manuscript version appropriate for publishing in "Dairy". But, I ask you once more the title of Table 6 because this table is dealing with the body condition score of investigated animals, not average milk yield.

Author Response

Thank you for seeking clarification but there is no error here.

Table 6 refers to the combined treatment group data on milk yield whereas Figure 4 refers to the combined treatment group data on body condition score.

Perhaps the reviewer has interpreted that Table 6 is the caption for Figure 4 as they are in sequence?

When published, it may be necessary to ensure that Table 6 and Figure are not placed together?