Association of Feed Efficiency, Feeding Rate, and Behaviour with the Milk Performance of Dairy Cows

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Manuscript dairy-1396180, entitled “Association of feed efficiency, feeding rate and behaviour with the milk performance of dairy cows”

General comment

 

The article provides useful information about the relationship of feed efficiency, feeding rate and behaviour with the milk performance in dairy cows. Although, the experiment is in general appropriately designed and implemented, there are some points that should be corrected or clarified.

 

Major comments

• There is a small sample size for cows ≥ 3rd lactation. Why? Was this parameter evaluated? In Table 1, authors state that they have 1895 observations for lactation. Cows were 26. What did they mean?
• You should include explanation of ruminating time, feeding time, resting time and activity time in Material and Methods after L132 and delete them form the footnotes of Table 1.
• Please remove Figures 1 and 2 in page 5, after their first mention in text
• Please remove L183-194 in Material and Methods
• In Table 4, the numbers of Ratio FM and feeding rate that are used for the categorization of dairy cows are not correctly presented (≥5 and ≥31 for FM? ≥31 for feeding rate?). I think that is better to use FCR instead of Ratio FM throughout the text
• Sometimes what is written in text, is not in accordance with the Tables:

L201-202: Also for resting time?

L203: Please check Table 2. The highest ratio FM (2.44) is shown.

L247: “…showed the lowest milk yield (24.8 kg/day) and the highest feed intake…”

L285 and L26-27: Please check Table 4. This is not correct for rumination/feeding ratio, since it is similar with that of intermediate group (greater numerical value)

L305-306: Please check it. It is the lowest.

• There are some parts that are confounding and is necessary to be rephrased: L237-240, 243-245, 256-259, 265, 308, 334-335
• Please check the reference style of the Journal

 

Minor points

 

L15: “collected” instead of “collated”

L16-18: “Cows averaged (mean ± standard deviation) 2.2 ± 1.7 lactations, were in their 128th ± 40 day of the lactation, yielded 27.5 ± 5.5 kg/day milk, 1.95 ± 0.69 kg feed were used for the production of 1 kg milk (ratio FM), had 575 ± 72 min/day rumination time…”

L20: “selected” instead of “chosen”

L22-23: “However, the relative milk yield (milk yield per 100 kg of body weight) was the highest (4.01 kg/day) in the most…”

L29: “…insight into the association of feed behaviour and feed efficiency with milk…”

L36: Are you sure that 40% is correct and not underestimated? I think that 50-70% is the most common percentage.

L43: “This hypothesis has…”

L45: “A universal…”

L46: “…not exist and multiple…”

L47: “…into products…”

L58: “…Arndt et al., 2015). At the same time, animals…”

L61-62: “In other words” instead of “It means that”

L81: “Genetic improvement of dairy cattle is now…”

L87: “its impairment” instead of “reach these limits”

L92-93: Please delete (repetition, L45-47)

L120: “All participating farms milked twice daily and milk yield (MY) of each…” In L107, authors state that was only one experimental farm. One or more farms?

L140: “comprises” instead of “comprising of”

In Table 1 – Ratio FM, the minimum limit is 0.27. Is it possible?

L164-165: Please check and correct this sentence

L174: “selected” instead of “chosen”

L176: “recorded” instead of “observed”

L182: What do you mean? Please rephrase and clarify

L183: “Thus, in the present study, we will…”

L185: Please delete “as the chemical energy”

L186: “…and some as heat…”

L189: “…can be found in the literature (NRC, 2001).”

L204: ≤3.9 kg/day or ≤4 kg/day?

L204-205: Please delete “Relative milk yield is milk yield per 100 kg of body weight.”

L205: “Body weight measurement is important…”

L215: Please delete “relative”

L220-221: “However, in the groups categorized according to their milk yield no significant differences in ratio FM were found as we expected due to the mixed feeding of efficient…”

L225: “consume”

L227: “…findings, since activity…”

L234: “were found in” instead of “was achieved with”

L240: “reported” instead of “added”

L245-246: “Similar results were also demonstrated by the analysis…”

L272: “…was previously reported…”

L279-280: Please delete “The measurement of feeding time and rumination time is explained 279 in Table 1.”

L289: “…(≤0.14 kg/min) were +39 min/day, +40 min/day and -31 min/day, respectively (Table 4).”

L296-297: “…sorting and as a result efficiency of milk production is improved (King et al, 2016).

L299: “Table 3”

L300-303: Please delete (repetition, L287-289)

L314: What do you mean? Your findings were not taken into account? 6 years ago?

L375: “…is recalculated as milk…”

L382: “feeding behaviour”

L383: “…and welfare status of animals.”

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is well written. The main criticism is the lack of a clear link between the objectives and the conclusions. The authors should try to better stress the conclusions based on the objectives declared. The introduction should be shortened and some redundant sentences should be eliminated. 

Author Response

 

Reviewer 2: The manuscript is well written.

We appreciate very much the positive feedback from the Reviewer.

 

Reviewer 2: The main criticism is the lack of a clear link between the objectives and the conclusions. The authors should try to better stress the conclusions based on the objectives declared.

Authors: Thank you for this valuable comment. In response, the captions under Figures 8 and 9 have been supplemented with information in L120-123: “The sample size for cows ≥ 3rd lactation was less due to the reduced availability of cows in that age range in the herd being evaluated. The samples were sized to ensure a representative dataset of a range of ages and the analysis was done the dataset (n=26) in its entirety.”

 

Reviewer 2: The introduction should be shortened and some redundant sentences should be eliminated.

Authors: Some paragraphs were deleted from the introduction and some were more appropriately moved there from the methodology. Additionally, the article was searched for redundant descriptions, in the results and deleted repeated statements.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors made the necessary amendments and the article is substantially  improved. However, some parts should be corrected.

L17: The phrase "128±40 days" is repeated. Please delete it

L37: Please add: "...of production in Ireland [1]."

L114-120: What do you mean? Please rephrase

Please check categorization for FCR in Table 4. What is the meaning of "?"

Author Response

Reviewer 1: Authors made the necessary amendments and the article is substantially improved. However, some parts should be corrected.

Authors: Thank you for your careful review and for improving the quality of the paper.

 

Reviewer 1: L17: The phrase "128±40 days" is repeated. Please delete it

Authors: deleted as suggested

 

Reviewer 1: L37: Please add: "...of production in Ireland [1]."

Authors: deleted as suggested

 

Reviewer 1: L114-120: What do you mean? Please rephrase

Authors: The paragraph has been rephrased as follows: “In order to ensure that the total times recorded for each behaviour are representative of the actual proportion of time spent in each throughout the day, only complete daily records were included in the dataset. I.e. if, due to technical problems, not all the information recorded by the collar is collected at the base station and the sum of all the behaviour records per cow per day was less than 1440 minutes (60 minutes x 24 hours), the recordings for that cow day was reported as a missing value and was removed from the dataset.”

Reviewer 1: Please check categorization for FCR in Table 4. What is the meaning of "?"

Authors: The mid ranges have now been filled in for those categories. Thank you for the corrections. The revised paper is attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx