PONE-D-21-30153Direct and indirect nutritional factors that determine reproductive performance of heifer and primiparous cowsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Eloy,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Dear author, please proceed to make the edits suggested by the reviewers and submit a revised version of your manuscript. I am including some of my suggestions as well in the attached document.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 19 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Luis Alonso Villalobos

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear author

We have received the comments from three reviewers. Two of them considered that your manuscript requires a minor revision and the third one suggested to reject it. In my role as Academic Editor I agree with the two reviewers and I consider that the manuscript has technical and scientific merit to be published on PLOS ONE.

Please read carefully the suggestions given by the reviewers and submit a revised version.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: General Comment: The authors have used a vast amount of published information for analysis, and done so in a useful and understandable manner. I commend the authors on the extensive review and use of existing literature as citations in the manuscript. This increases the understanding and validity of the current research presented.

Statistical Analysis: As a reviewer I confess that I do not feel qualified to critique and fully understand the specifics and depth of statistical analysis. However, I trust that the approach of the authors is consistent will acceptable procedures.

Line by line suggestions to authors:

Abstract: In the 2nd to last sentence, the phrase "...as well as allows higher in stocking rate..." substitute "an increase" for "higher"

100-108: The authors do a good job of outlining the aim (objective) of the study, along with the approach to investigate their aim. However, no direct hypothesis is stated. I suggest the authors include a specific hypothesis in this section, and refer to and substantiate this hypothesis in the conclusion of the manuscript.

Table 1: This is an extensive and useful table to fully demonstrate the extent and potential application of the results across a wide expanse of conditions.

141: Provide a brief, yet informative statement to better define the term "improved"

143: Provide greater detail concerning the type, level and range of supplementation used.

231-232: The result of taurine (straight-bred) pregnancy rate increasing faster and higher maximum than crossbreed females is inconsistent with numerous evidence showing the impact of hybrid vigor on reproductive traits. Authors should address this finding. This result is also noted in lines 356-357, and referenced in Figure 2. In line 373, selection for precocity is a cause for this result, however this appears to be conjecture without evidence.

450: "weigh" should be corrected to "weight"

452-458: Could the decrease in pregnancy rate also be attributed to simply the stress of increased crowding and grazing competition of the animals at higher stocking rates?

484: suggest "use as a reproductive management tool"

491: correct "out" to "our"

656: Gregory is misspelled

Figures: My general comment is that these are helpful and prescriptive, however I offer a few suggestions;

Fig. 3 - horizontal is misspelled

Fig. 4 - is it possible to include the level of significance (i.e. P value) directly the figure?

Fig. 5 - similar to comment above, include evidence of quadratic decrease as stated in line 327 with the P value or similar notation directly in the figure. Also, suggest describing what the tick marks on the X axis are.

Fig. 6 - An illustrative representation of factors influencing pregnancy rate. I suggest that more visual contrast in the thickness of the lines (thickness) would improve the clarity of the diagram.

I thank the authors for undertaking this project. It was informative and expansive.

Reviewer #2: The rationale of the manuscript is very interesting and aims to clarify some aspects of cattle breeding even if the analysis is based on manuscript not available on bibliographic platforms. Furthermore, it is my opinion that the number of theses and subjects analyzed are not sufficient to justify the conclusions. For these reasons I reject the manuscript

Reviewer #3: This is a well done meta analysis, it should be useful for decision making in rangeland/pasture systems. Please consider these small edits.

on line 231 the phrase 'taurine females' is used and this is new to me, I have never seen this before. If I had to guess it means 'purebred.' but either a definition should be given or please use a different word.

line 339 cattle is misspelled

line 481, perhaps the word 'analysis' is more correct than 'synthesis' in this context,

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: John P McNamara

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-30153_revAE.pdf

PONE-D-21-30153R1Direct and indirect nutritional factors that determine reproductive performance of heifer and primiparous cows1PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Eloy,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

============================================================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 04 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Luis Alonso Villalobos

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear author, we have received the comments of your manuscript and I am glad to inform you that a minor revision has been requested. Please go through the final edits suggested by the reviewers and send the second revised version so we can expedite the publication process. Let us know if you have any questions regarding the edits suggested or the process itself.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

Reviewer #5: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #3: Thanks for a nice piece of work.

I have no idea why there is a minimum character count on this box that makes no sense to me, if I can say something in 30 characters why do I need to come up 70 more?

Reviewer #4: In general, the MS is well written, materials and methods section are clearly stated, as well as the results, discussion and main conclusions. Authors did a good job addressing all the previous comments, which improved the original MS. There are still some minor corrections, specially regarding the objective and hypothesis of the study.

Lines 99-101: It is necessary to include “in beef heifers and primiparous cows” in the objective.

Lines 103-104: I think it would be better to use “initial body weight at breeding” and “average daily gains during the breeding season” instead of “body weight” and “changes in body weight per day during breeding season”, respectively.

Lines 106-109: In the hypothesis there´s no mention to factors like: animal category, type of pasture, nor body weight at the beginning of the breeding season. What did the authors expected relative to those factors?

Lines 109-111: I think this would be more adequate for the discussion or conclusion section.

Line 235: change “with an average weight of 440.0 kg or more and had an expected pregnancy rate of 99.0%” to “with an average weight of 440.0 kg or more had an expected pregnancy rate of 99.0%”

Lines 319-324: This corresponds to the discussion section.

Lines 468-470: A reference for this would be necessary.

Reviewer #5: General: The study evaluates the factors determining the reproductive performance of beef heifers and cows in the Pampas Region. The study has a systemic approach and provides quantitative relationships which are considerably useful, and can be used to optimize stocking rates to improve heifers and cows reproductive performance.

The minor revisions I have are listed below:

62 From instead of form.

87 Mention the effects of body condition score on pregnancy rate.

99 Which are your hypothesis? I recommend to avoid using subjective adverbs such as “carefully”. I assume that if your objective is to quantify, you will do it carefully.

123 Did you considered the changes in breeds genetics during the period evaluated?

142 Which were the types of supplements used? Was there a range of supplementation levels?

187 Maybe the sentence: “This final model…” sould be change with “the final model after simplifications”, since it may generate confusions with the full model.

196 sup.pre was not defined.

202 sup.breed was not defined.

205 Is sup.pre defined correctly? Or was it confused with sup.breed?

Statistical Analyses If you reported de means of body condition score of your database, why didn´t you include it in your models?

233 “… 440.0 kg or more and had…” delete the “and”.

237 Interaction instead of Interactin

282 Instead of “near its average” I would suggest to use a range of daily gain.

360 Can you discuss this with your results of body condition score?

369 Couldn´t this be corrected by using the body condition score instead of the body weight in the models?

393-396 Couldn´t this be corrected by using the body condition score instead of the body weight in the models?

436 Correct the citation to “In agreement with Rovira (1974)”

452-458 It´s very interesting the analysis of the effects of stocking rate not mediated by the effects on BW at breeding and BW gain during breeding. You discussed that this effect occurs only when BW at the beginning of the breeding season is greater than average, and mentioned that parasites could be a possible cause of this response. However, parasites mainly affect weight gain. I suggest to discuss which would be the health and management variables that don´t affect the nutritional condition but do affect the reproductive performance.

484 be used IN herd reproductive management.

Figure 3 I would suggest to include body mass average and standard deviation as in Figure 2

Figure 4 and 5 I would suggest to include Stocking rate average and standard deviation as in Figure 2

Figure 5 The y axis title is incomplete.

Figure 6 This is a great representation, however the size of the figures is too small and it´s difficult to read. The references to the type of line are not clear, and it is hard to distinguish the thick of the lines.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #3: Yes: John P McNamara

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Direct and indirect nutritional factors that determine reproductive performance of heifer and primiparous cows1

PONE-D-21-30153R2

Dear Dr. Eloy,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Luis Alonso Villalobos

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear author.

It is my pleasure to inform that your manuscript has been accepted for publication in PLOS ONE. We appreciate the timely manner in which you made the edits suggested by the reviewers as well as your patience while we received the comments from the reviewers.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

Reviewer #5: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #3: NO FURTHER COMMENTS

Reviewer #5: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #5: No

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