Comparison of Cattle Housing Systems Based on the Criterion of Damage to Barn Equipment and Construction Errors
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments:
The manuscript animals-1820683, entitled "Comparison of cattle housing systems based on the criterion of damage to barn equipment and construction errors" with Mr. Gaworski as first author deals with an interesting topic within the emerging field of animal welfare in dairy cattle. The manuscript is relatively structured, in most cases carefully formulated and presents interesting ideas. However, some sections need to be revised and major mistakes must be corrected especially in the results and discussion section. Various comments for changes to the text could be find in the following section.
Detailed comments:
Line 6 What does SGGW mean? Please avoid abbreviations in the affiliations
Line 9 Please include the species you are looking at in your study (e.g. dairy cattle barns)
Line 13 Please simplify the simple summary so that even inexperienced readers can understand it. Some sentences are identical in the abstract and should be simplified.
Line 31 Please include the species you are looking at in your study (e.g. dairy cattle)
Line 45 Maybe “according to Hughes [4]”? Please read the instruction for authors concerning the reference style in the text
Line 45 Maybe “conducted by xxx [14]”? Please read the instruction for authors concerning the reference style and harmonize within the manuscript
Line 114 “Slatted floor” instead of “slotted floor”?
Line 127 Please harmonize within the manuscript: “behaviour” or “behavior”?
Line 140 This section is very relevant for understanding the objectives. I would suggest to place it before the objectives
Line 166 Was it a criterion that the farms should be run by families or is it typical for these regions?
Line 175 Please insert a reference to Table 1 in this sentence
Line 185 “Were collected” instead of “was collected”?
Line 188 Why did you asked for animal health problems in last calendar year? Maybe it is more useful to ask for problems in the last 12 months in order to increase comparability between farms?
Line 189 How did the farms collect the data? Did they assess a sample of animals?
Line 189 Why haven't you done your own animal welfare assessments to be able to evaluate a standardized data set?
Line 199 How are construction errors defined? Were errors made during the development of the equipment or during installation of the equipment?
Line 214 Please insert the explanation of the abbreviation “SD” as a footnote
Line 227 You were talking before about the walking area and not the social area. Please harmonize within the manuscript
Line 240 This sentence is nearly identical with the heading of the table and could therefore be deleted. Please refer to Table 3 in another sentence
Line 243 The text is partly hard to read. Could you please increase the space between the columns?
Line 243 It seems reasonable to combine tables 3 and 4. Readability could be further increased if they were made in landscape format.
Line 243 Why do you call it “social area” in tie-stall housing systems? The cows are not able to perform social behaviour, because they are tethered. Little social contact is only possible with the neighbours.
Line 243 It is a bit confusing when you talk about different zones in tie-stalls. The cows perform their behaviours almost exclusively in the lying areas. Maybe you can find another term?
Line 257 “Results and Discussion”
Line 257 This section is too superficial. There should be much more discussion of the results and more citation of appropriate recent literature.
Line 264 Is the font in the image identical to the font in the text? If not, please correct it.
Line 269 Did you count the design errors one by one, e.g. if all cubicles were wrongly configured or did you note them only once?
Line 269 Did you consider the quality of the damage or the design errors? It is possible that many small damages are less significant than a few large damages.
Line 275 Please harmonize within the manuscript: “analysed” or “analyzed”?
Line 288 Is the font in the image identical to the font in the text? If not, please correct it.
Line 324 Please insert the explanation of the abbreviation “SD” as a footnote
Line 324 Please describe briefly in the text how to interpret skewness and kurtosis.
Line 324 Please use “herd size” instead of “cow number” as previously in the text.
Line 324 It would be useful to additionally insert the usable area per cow to have a comparative value
Line 344 Maybe “on the other hand” instead of “another hand”?
Line 373 Maybe “on the other hand” instead of “another hand”?
Line 386 Maybe “on the other hand” instead of “another hand”?
Lien 391 Maybe delete the term “there” in the sentence?
Line 437 During the past one year (12 months) or the last calendar year?
Line 436 Please provide some more information concerning the health problems in the material and method section: How are they defined and how they are assessed? Could you give examples for “other health problems”?
Line 436 Pleas use the term “Health problems” instead of “data” in the first column.
Line 436 It would make sense to present the number of health problems per cow in the tables, because tie-stall and freestall farms are different in terms of herd size
Line 479 Abbreviations (e.g. FA, LA) should be explained in the footnotes
Line 479 Some headings in the columns are incorrectly separated or not complete. Please use abbreviations
Line 479 Please explain why some values are red and others black. Which threshold did you use and why? Please cite the reference in the material and method-section
Line 479 Please discuss the results of Table 7 in the text or present the values as supplementary material.
Line 479 “Laminitis” instead of “laminatis”
Line 488 “Laminitis” instead of “laminatis”
Line 488 Please discuss the results of Table 8 in the text or present the values as supplementary material.
Line 666 The self-citation-rate is relatively high. Please use your own publications only if they are really relevant for the manuscript
Author Response
General comments:
The manuscript animals-1820683, entitled "Comparison of cattle housing systems based on the criterion of damage to barn equipment and construction errors" with Mr. Gaworski as first author deals with an interesting topic within the emerging field of animal welfare in dairy cattle. The manuscript is relatively structured, in most cases carefully formulated and presents interesting ideas. However, some sections need to be revised and major mistakes must be corrected especially in the results and discussion section. Various comments for changes to the text could be find in the following section.
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for evaluating the manuscript, all valuable comments, suggestions and opinions. Thanks to them, we were able to correct any shortcomings and improve the quality of the information provided. All changes and corrections in the text are marked in red.
Detailed comments:
Line 6 What does SGGW mean? Please avoid abbreviations in the affiliations
The acronym of SGGW has been removed from affiliation. SGGW is the acronym of the name of my University in Polish, i.e. Szkoła Główna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego (Warsaw University of Life Sciences).
Line 9 Please include the species you are looking at in your study (e.g. dairy cattle barns)
We have provided a detailed area of the study (dairy cattle barns) in the first sentence of the Simple Summary.
Line 13 Please simplify the simple summary so that even inexperienced readers can understand it. Some sentences are identical in the abstract and should be simplified.
The simple summary has been simplified as a result of the changes we made. We tried to rewrite the simple summary so that it would be more accessible to readers.
Line 31 Please include the species you are looking at in your study (e.g. dairy cattle)
We supplemented the keywords with the term "dairy cattle".
Line 45 Maybe “according to Hughes [4]”? Please read the instruction for authors concerning the reference style in the text
We changed the method of citing publications in the text of the article, according to the editor's requirements.
Line 45 Maybe “conducted by xxx [14]”? Please read the instruction for authors concerning the reference style and harmonize within the manuscript
We corrected the method of citing publications in the text of the article, taking into account the guidelines of the instructions for authors.
Line 114 “Slatted floor” instead of “slotted floor”?
I checked the source material (doi: 10.3168/jds.S0022-0302(02)74055-1); the title of the article (in the Journal of Dairy Science) is: Do Cows Prefer a Barn Compartment with a Grooved or Slotted Floor? That's why there is a slotted floor in our article.
Line 127 Please harmonize within the manuscript: “behaviour” or “behavior”?
I standardized the spelling of the word using the term behavior in the text.
Line 140 This section is very relevant for understanding the objectives. I would suggest to place it before the objectives
I repositioned this section before the paragraph that stated the purpose of the research study.
Line 166 Was it a criterion that the farms should be run by families or is it typical for these regions?
Dairy production in Poland is dominated by family farms, especially in Mazowsze and Podlasie, where the research was conducted. Therefore, we included this group of farms in our research study. In Poland, there are also dairy farms in the form of state-owned companies (holdings) (formerly, before 1989: State Farms), but these units are located mainly in the western part of the country.
Line 175 Please insert a reference to Table 1 in this sentence
The reference to Table 1 has been included in the sentence.
Line 185 “Were collected” instead of “was collected”?
I made an appropriate change to the sentence.
Line 188 Why did you asked for animal health problems in last calendar year? Maybe it is more useful to ask for problems in the last 12 months in order to increase comparability between farms?
In addition to the data from the last calendar year, the research also included data from the current part of the year in which the farm visit took place. On this basis, we compared the data from the last calendar year and the period of the last 12 months. These data were very similar. Based on this approach, I verified the sentence in the text, taking into account data on health problems of animals in herds for the last 12 months.
Line 189 How did the farms collect the data? Did they assess a sample of animals?
The visited dairy farms were covered by the herd's milk performance control system. The operation of this system in Poland takes into account the fact that farms are visited once a month by a zootechnician who takes additional milk samples (for chemical and microbiological analysis), determines the amount of milk produced from each cow, collects data on calving cows, their health problems and mortality and other. This data is available on individual online farmer accounts. The farmers are the owners of this data because they pay for being covered by the herd's milk performance control system. This data, provided by farmers, was included in this research study.
Line 189 Why haven't you done your own animal welfare assessments to be able to evaluate a standardized data set?
We decided not to carry out our own animal welfare assessment on the dairy farms visited. Such an assessment would generate a significant amount of work, the need to use appropriate welfare assessment protocols and to produce the results of welfare studies. Nevertheless, during the farm visits, various technical data were measured in the lying, feeding, milking and social / walking areas. On this basis, we proposed the index of technical standards fulfilment (ITSF). This indicator corresponds to the assessment of animal welfare by comparing the different dimensions in the four areas mentioned with the values recommended by the standards. The results of these studies, together with the developed algorithm of procedure, were published in the article: Gaworski M., Boćkowski M. Method for comparing current versus recommended housing conditions in dairy cattle production. Agricult. Food Sci. 2018, 27, 17-27. doi: 10.23986/afsci.65429.
Line 199 How are construction errors defined? Were errors made during the development of the equipment or during installation of the equipment?
Design errors were defined in the research study as solutions that do not meet the accepted standards of construction and equipment of barns in terms of dimensions and safety of use. A specialist in such standards and equipment for barns is the second author of the article (Michał Boćkowski), my PhD student. Michał works in a company that installs technical equipment in new barns and revitalizes old barns, and has over 15 years of professional experience. Identification of construction errors is within the scope of his professional duties when he prepares projects for the reconstruction of old barns and their fitting with new equipment. Design errors arise mainly during the construction of livestock facilities and the installation of specialized equipment. This is often the result of the inexperience of the staff responsible for installing technical equipment in the barn. Design errors are sometimes caused by farmers who "think" that something can be done (built) in the barn other than according to the applicable standards. We already have material for another article, with an analysis of the "innovation" of farmers who add various - according to their own ideas - elements of equipment in the barn in order to increase the comfort of their own work and the welfare of dairy cattle.
Line 214 Please insert the explanation of the abbreviation “SD” as a footnote
I have added an explanation of the abbreviation SD under Table 1.
Line 227 You were talking before about the walking area and not the social area. Please harmonize within the manuscript
When I reread the article, I also noticed the lack of consistent use of one name of the area in question. Throughout the article, I introduced the use of the word "social" and in the case of barns with the freestall system, I pointed to the links between "social" and "walking".
Line 240 This sentence is nearly identical with the heading of the table and could therefore be deleted. Please refer to Table 3 in another sentence
Instead of the sentence given, I wrote another sentence with reference to Table 3 and Table 4. Therefore, I deleted the sentence between Tables 3 and 4.
Line 243 The text is partly hard to read. Could you please increase the space between the columns?
I increased the inside margins in the columns so that the distances between the text in adjacent columns are longer.
Line 243 It seems reasonable to combine tables 3 and 4. Readability could be further increased if they were made in landscape format.
I combined Tables 3 and 4 into one Table. Therefore, I have renumbered the following tables in the article. Moreover, I changed the layout of the Table to landscape format.
Line 243 Why do you call it “social area” in tie-stall housing systems? The cows are not able to perform social behaviour, because they are tethered. Little social contact is only possible with the neighbours.
In many Polish farms with cows in the tie-stall housing system, the animals in the period May - October are taken from the barn to the pasture. The cows only return to the barn for milking, twice a day. The cows pass through the social area in the barn where they are in contact with each other. In the social area, the cows are waiting to be taken to their stalls where they are milked. Such solutions were also used in the farms covered by the research, which is why we took into account the social area in barns with a tie-stall housing system.
Line 243 It is a bit confusing when you talk about different zones in tie-stalls. The cows perform their behaviours almost exclusively in the lying areas. Maybe you can find another term?
I agree that, from the point of view of cows' behavior, the lying area plays a key role in a barn with a tie-stall system. On the other hand, the criteria for consideration in our research were equipment damage and errors in individual zones. In practice, in tie-stall barns, four zones can be identified that are related to cows and where technical problems can be found. Of course, the most obvious is the lying area and the cows have direct contact with it throughout the day. The cows also have direct contact with the feeding zone, which is why we also took this zone into account. In a barn with a tie-stall system, the milking area is associated with the lying area, but it concerns other technical elements, hence it is considered as a separate area. The role of the social area in a barn with a tie-stall system was presented in the answer to the previous question. In our opinion, the inclusion of four zones in the barn with a tie-stall system is justified.
Line 257 “Results and Discussion”
As suggested, I corrected the title of Chapter 3.
Line 257 This section is too superficial. There should be much more discussion of the results and more citation of appropriate recent literature.
We extended the discussion of the research results, including the citation of the recent literature.
Line 264 Is the font in the image identical to the font in the text? If not, please correct it.
I changed the font in the image to the one used in the text of the article.
Line 269 Did you count the design errors one by one, e.g. if all cubicles were wrongly configured or did you note them only once?
When assessing the design errors in the barn (during the visit to the barn), we distinguished error categories. The pens configuration could have been such a category of error. We counted it as one mistake.
Line 269 Did you consider the quality of the damage or the design errors? It is possible that many small damages are less significant than a few large damages.
In our research, we took into account the quality of damage to the equipment. We took into account only the damage which, due to its size, could endanger the health and safety of cows.
Line 275 Please harmonize within the manuscript: “analysed” or “analyzed”?
I have harmonized the words in the article; the word analyzed is used.
Line 288 Is the font in the image identical to the font in the text? If not, please correct it.
I changed the font in the image to the one used in the text of the article.
Line 324 Please insert the explanation of the abbreviation “SD” as a footnote
I have added an explanation of the abbreviation SD under Table.
Line 324 Please describe briefly in the text how to interpret skewness and kurtosis.
I added a paragraph in the text of the article with the interpretation of skewness and kurtosis of the research results.
Line 324 Please use “herd size” instead of “cow number” as previously in the text.
I changed to "herd size" in this and the following Tables.
Line 324 It would be useful to additionally insert the usable area per cow to have a comparative value
A row with usable area per cow has been inserted with the calculated indicators.
Line 344 Maybe “on the other hand” instead of “another hand”?
I introduced the suggested change, i.e. the wording "on the other hand".
Line 373 Maybe “on the other hand” instead of “another hand”?
I introduced the suggested change, i.e. the wording "on the other hand".
Line 386 Maybe “on the other hand” instead of “another hand”?
I introduced the suggested change, i.e. the wording "on the other hand".
Line 391 Maybe delete the term “there” in the sentence?
I have removed the term "there" from this sentence.
Line 437 During the past one year (12 months) or the last calendar year?
With regard to the comment on line 188, I corrected the sentence to include: the last 12 months.
Line 436 Please provide some more information concerning the health problems in the material and method section: How are they defined and how they are assessed? Could you give examples for “other health problems”?
In the Materials and Methods chapter, I have completed the description of sources of information about cattle health problems. I also took note of information about other cattle health problems.
Line 436 Pleas use the term “Health problems” instead of “data” in the first column.
I included "Health problems" instead of "Data".
Line 436 It would make sense to present the number of health problems per cow in the tables, because tie-stall and freestall farms are different in terms of herd size
The number of health problems per cow is additionally included in the Table.
Line 479 Abbreviations (e.g. FA, LA) should be explained in the footnotes
I have added footnotes with explanations of abbreviations under the Table.
Line 479 Some headings in the columns are incorrectly separated or not complete. Please use abbreviations
I corrected the headings in the columns. I included abbreviations and their explanation in footnotes.
Line 479 Please explain why some values are red and others black. Which threshold did you use and why? Please cite the reference in the material and method-section
Details on the interpretation of the statistical analysis results marked in red are provided in the caption in Table 7 (revised in the current version). Significant differences in the case of the considered parameter for the variable: Housing system (tie-stall vs freestall system) are marked in red. The significance of the differentiation was determined at the level of p <0.05
Line 479 Please discuss the results of Table 7 in the text or present the values as supplementary material.
I developed a discussion of the study results shown in the Table.
Line 479 “Laminitis” instead of “laminatis”
I have included the correct term (Laminitis) in the Table.
Line 488 “Laminitis” instead of “laminatis”
I have included the correct term (Laminitis) in the Table.
Line 488 Please discuss the results of Table 8 in the text or present the values as supplementary material.
I developed a discussion of the study results shown in the Table.
Line 666 The self-citation-rate is relatively high. Please use your own publications only if they are really relevant for the manuscript
I removed the last of the cited own publications.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript looks aimed to provide a comparison between tie-stall and freestall housing systems for dairy cattle, in terms of degradation of constructions and defects in buildings, with the ambition of correlating such findings with data about cows' health.
Actually, the objectives are expressed in a very unclear way, and in fact, the introduction is not directly related to such aspects, but to the general topic of cattle barns.
As for the structure of the research and the results obtained, first of all, the definition of the sample of farms considered has not been motivated with scientific considerations, and it remains quite obscure.
Then the information collected about damages and errors in the construction of barns is merely descriptive, therefore it is not suitable to be used in quantitative analyses, which was the intention of the authors.
This kind of analysis would have required the definition of scales of scores based on quantitative measurements and technical surveys of the farm buildings.
Moreover, the information about cows' health has been reported without any specification about the sources and the criteria adopted for data collection, homogenization, and processing. Therefore it is not possible to understand what kind of issues have been detected, in what time interval, and in which circumstances.
Due to these severe drawbacks, the results of the study cannot be considered either reliable or informative and the article should not be accepted for publication.
Further specific comments are indicated in the file attached.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for evaluating the manuscript, all valuable comments, suggestions and opinions. Thanks to them, we were able to correct any shortcomings and improve the quality of the information provided. All changes and corrections in the text are marked in red.
The manuscript looks aimed to provide a comparison between tie-stall and freestall housing systems for dairy cattle, in terms of degradation of constructions and defects in buildings, with the ambition of correlating such findings with data about cows' health.
Actually, the objectives are expressed in a very unclear way, and in fact, the introduction is not directly related to such aspects, but to the general topic of cattle barns.
In the Introduction chapter, we have introduced some additions to the text in such a way that the individual areas in the barn can be identified in connection with the tie-stall and / or freestall system.
As for the structure of the research and the results obtained, first of all, the definition of the sample of farms considered has not been motivated with scientific considerations, and it remains quite obscure.
We have added the citation of the publication on the assessment of the required sample [Endres et al., 2014]. When determining the size of the sample (the number of farms surveyed), we followed the principle of its representativeness in relation to the number of dairy farms in a given region. The list of 150 farms mentioned in the article (lines: 165-166) is the result of the work of the second author (Michał Boćkowski), employed in a company dealing with equipping new and revitalized farms with technical equipment.
Then the information collected about damages and errors in the construction of barns is merely descriptive, therefore it is not suitable to be used in quantitative analyses, which was the intention of the authors.
We had to apply a description of the identified damage and design errors. This approach to the assessment of livestock facilities is used in practice by the second author (Michał Boćkowski), who works in a company that equips barns and other facilities with technical equipment. For statistical analysis, we used the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test. The number of technical problems and design errors in each of the barns visited was calculated. Hence, in the following parts (descriptive statistics and statistical analysis) we used numerical values.
This kind of analysis would have required the definition of scales of scores based on quantitative measurements and technical surveys of the farm buildings.
At the stage of data collection and development, we did not use a scale of score system.
Moreover, the information about cows' health has been reported without any specification about the sources and the criteria adopted for data collection, homogenization, and processing. Therefore it is not possible to understand what kind of issues have been detected, in what time interval, and in which circumstances.
Explanations on the collection of data on cow health problems have been included in the revised text of the article.
Due to these severe drawbacks, the results of the study cannot be considered either reliable or informative and the article should not be accepted for publication.
Further specific comments are indicated in the file attached.
Thank you for any additional comments provided directly in the text of the article. We have included all the suggested corrections in the revised version of the article.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments:
The manuscript animals-1820683, entitled "Comparison of cattle housing systems based on the criterion of damage to barn equipment and construction errors" with Mr. Gaworski as first author was successfully revised by the authors. Most of the reviewer comments were considered in the revision and detailed answers were given to the questions. However, some major mistakes can still be found in the manuscript. Various comments for suggested changes to the text could be find in the following section.
Detailed comments:
Line 11 Maybe it makes sense to give an example for “internal equipment” in order to increase the comprehension of the readers?
Line 16 Maybe it makes sense to give an example for “cow health problems” in order to increase the comprehension of the readers?
Line 38 Please begin the sentence with “Dairy cattle barns and production technologies….”
Line 45 Please rephrase this sentence: …are also important issues and these conditions should be considered in the assessment of the barn.” or something similar
Line 48 Why did you added the term “similar to free-range farming husbandry”? You mentioned before, that the cows spend the whole year in the barn, so that this term does not make sense.
Line 56 Material elements such as technical equipment are important parts of the housing environment. Therefore, I would not consider these two terms to be independent. Please rephrase this sentence to clarify the statement.
Line 87 What do you mean with feed barrier project?
Line 90 “Analyze” instead of “analyse”?
Line 115 In my opinion it is not useful to begin this paragraph with information on the maternity pen. It makes more sense so describe the effects of the lying areas on animal welfare in general and later concerning the maternity pen.
Line 155 It is still not clear why you are comparing the two stall systems. Is it not primarily to test your newly developed? Please specify your objective.
Line 180 Please rephrase this sentence: …40 family farms were randomly selected” and delete “They were family farms”.
Line 208 How did you get information on “skin damage”? These so called integument alterations are usually not part of the routinely collected data. Please use only data which are assessed with a high quality.
Line 208 Please describe in detail which animal health parameters are used and how they are measured (e.g. mastitis = clinical mastitis or somatic cell count >400,000 cells per ml)
Table 1 “Min. / max. cow milk yield” analogous to the line "cow herd size"
Line 244 It is not necessary to reference “table 2” a second time.
Line 250 Please harmonize within the manuscript: “Description” or “explanation” in the footnotes?
Line 266 Please describe in detail the differences between “damage to barn equipment” and “design and implementation errors” in order to increase the understanding of the table
Line 268 What do you want to express with this sentence (“implementation of the walking functions”)? Please clarify this statement.
Line 348 Information on statistical analysis should be given in the chapter "Material and Methods" and not in the results.
Line 377 What do you mean with the sentence: “Other important data – area intended for cows keeping – was not presented in the paper”? If the data are important, they should be presented in the paper.
Line 385 Please write “2.21 problems per barn” in brackets.
Line 392 “…is surprising” instead of “can be surprised”?
Line 403 Please harmonize within the manuscript: 2 decimal numbers…
Line 404 “it is possible” instead of “is it possible”?
Table 5 There is missing a word: Other hoof…?
Table 5 SD should again be explained in a footnote
Table 5 Please add “-“ in the columns skewness and kurtosis in line “other health problems”
Line 506 Popescu et al. also compared tie-stall and free-stall systems using the Welfare Quality protocol. Please take into greater account this publication in the discussion.
Line 526 Please discuss the results of the correlation analysis in more detail. Which relationships are interesting or surprising? Are these findings supported by other studies?
Line 526 Please discuss the limitations of your study in more detail. The animal welfare data were not collected by yourself, therefore the quality of the data cannot be guaranteed in some cases. It is important to point out that further studies with animal welfare assessments would be useful.
Table 7 Please explain the abbreviations (e.g. U, Z, Sum rang) in the footnotes.
Table 7 Why do you present the values for “z” and for “z corrected” together with the p-values? Maybe one of the values is enough?
Table 7 Why do you present the values as a sum rang and not the means or medians?
Line 578 Please highlight the practical significance of your newly developed approach. For example, could this be used in agricultural extension or animal welfare inspections? Or is it only intended as a scientific tool?
Line 716 “Von Keyserlingk” instead of “von Keyserlingk”.
Line 742 “De Boyer des Roches” instead of “de Boyer des Roches”
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thanks for revising the article, all comments and suggestions. I have included the changes and additions to the article in green.
Detailed comments:
Line 11 Maybe it makes sense to give an example for “internal equipment” in order to increase the comprehension of the readers?
I have added in parentheses examples of the internal equipment of the barn.
Line 16 Maybe it makes sense to give an example for “cow health problems” in order to increase the comprehension of the readers?
I have added examples of cow health problems in parentheses.
Line 38 Please begin the sentence with “Dairy cattle barns and production technologies….”
I made a suggested change to the first sentence in the Introduction.
Line 45 Please rephrase this sentence: …are also important issues and these conditions should be considered in the assessment of the barn.” or something similar
I made the suggested change in this part of the paragraph.
Line 48 Why did you added the term “similar to free-range farming husbandry”? You mentioned before, that the cows spend the whole year in the barn, so that this term does not make sense.
Thanks for the suggestion. I deleted the term in brackets from the sentence.
Line 56 Material elements such as technical equipment are important parts of the housing environment. Therefore, I would not consider these two terms to be independent. Please rephrase this sentence to clarify the statement.
I changed this part of the paragraph. I have broken down the sentence into two shorter sentences to simplify the information provided.
Line 87 What do you mean with feed barrier project?
Thank you for paying attention to this detail. I changed the word "project" to "design". The word "design" was used in the title of the article quoted here [Endres et al. 2005].
Line 90 “Analyze” instead of “analyse”?
Thank you for paying attention to this detail. I changed the word "analyse" to "analyze". I omitted this detail during the previous revision.
Line 115 In my opinion it is not useful to begin this paragraph with information on the maternity pen. It makes more sense so describe the effects of the lying areas on animal welfare in general and later concerning the maternity pen.
I have changed the beginning of this paragraph to move my considerations on maternity area to the second sentence. The impact of lying area on animal welfare has already been discussed in one of the previous paragraphs (lines: 71-84), so I did not elaborate on them again.
Line 155 It is still not clear why you are comparing the two stall systems. Is it not primarily to test your newly developed? Please specify your objective.
At the end of the Introduction chapter, I added a paragraph outlining the essence of the tie-stall and freestall system comparison.
Line 180 Please rephrase this sentence: …40 family farms were randomly selected” and delete “They were family farms”.
We changed the indicated sentence and removed the sentence with information about family farms.
Line 208 How did you get information on “skin damage”? These so called integument alterations are usually not part of the routinely collected data. Please use only data which are assessed with a high quality.
We received information on skin damage directly from the farmers we asked about skin problems. We have removed information about cow skin problems from the paper. I have come to the conclusion that assessing skin problems requires a detailed approach to such assessment. I have experience in this field gained during the experiment at UBC Dairy in Agassiz. In this experimental farm, I investigated skin lesions on the hind legs considering two zones: tuber calsis and tarsal joint; the experiment concerned leg injuries in connection with certain features of lying stalls with sand as the bedding material. Such a detailed approach to the assessment of damage was certainly not shown by the visited farmers, therefore we did not provide data on skin damage.
Line 208 Please describe in detail which animal health parameters are used and how they are measured (e.g. mastitis = clinical mastitis or somatic cell count >400,000 cells per ml)
I have completed the information on the assessment and measurement of selected cow health parameters.
Table 1 “Min. / max. cow milk yield” analogous to the line "cow herd size"
I made the suggested change.
Line 244 It is not necessary to reference “table 2” a second time.
I deleted the second reference to Table 2.
Line 250 Please harmonize within the manuscript: “Description” or “explanation” in the footnotes?
I standardized the terms used below the tables by using the word "Explanation".
Line 266 Please describe in detail the differences between “damage to barn equipment” and “design and implementation errors” in order to increase the understanding of the table
I have completed the explanation of these concepts in the paragraph where we referred to Table 3.
Line 268 What do you want to express with this sentence (“implementation of the walking functions”)? Please clarify this statement.
Sorry, but I sometimes write in pompous language. I simplified the sentence to clearly convey the main point of the social area.
Line 348 Information on statistical analysis should be given in the chapter "Material and Methods" and not in the results.
I moved the indicated sentence to the last paragraph of the "Material and Methods" chapter.
Line 377 What do you mean with the sentence: “Other important data – area intended for cows keeping – was not presented in the paper”? If the data are important, they should be presented in the paper.
I deleted the said sentence from the paragraph. I came to the conclusion that it would be too complex to discuss this data.
Line 385 Please write “2.21 problems per barn” in brackets.
I have placed the indicated part of the sentence in brackets.
Line 392 “…is surprising” instead of “can be surprised”?
I changed the indicated wording in the sentence.
Line 403 Please harmonize within the manuscript: 2 decimal numbers…
I have made a change in the numbers indicated.
Line 404 “it is possible” instead of “is it possible”?
Thank you for your detailed attention. I corrected the word order.
Table 5 There is missing a word: Other hoof…?
In Table 5, the word "Other-hoof" appears in the second line.
Table 5 SD should again be explained in a footnote
Below Table 5, I have included an explanation of the acronym SD.
Table 5 Please add “-“ in the columns skewness and kurtosis in line “other health problems”
I have added the signs "-" in the blanks in Table 5 and Table 4.
Line 506 Popescu et al. also compared tie-stall and free-stall systems using the Welfare Quality protocol. Please take into greater account this publication in the discussion.
I developed the discussion on the basis of the quoted publication by Popescu et al.
Line 526 Please discuss the results of the correlation analysis in more detail. Which relationships are interesting or surprising? Are these findings supported by other studies?
I completed this part of the discussion on the correlation of selected factors in the study.
Line 526 Please discuss the limitations of your study in more detail. The animal welfare data were not collected by yourself, therefore the quality of the data cannot be guaranteed in some cases. It is important to point out that further studies with animal welfare assessments would be useful.
I added a paragraph regarding the limitations in the assessment of the technical equipment of barns and design errors. The sentence on future research is already at the end of the second paragraph in the Conclusions chapter. I did not want to repeat this point in the Results and Discussion chapter.
Table 7 Please explain the abbreviations (e.g. U, Z, Sum rang) in the footnotes.
I added an explanation of the symbols Z and p in the footnotes.
Table 7 Why do you present the values for “z” and for “z corrected” together with the p-values? Maybe one of the values is enough?
In Table 7, I have removed "Z corrected", that is, the value of the corrected test used for associated ranks. Correspondingly, I also deleted the last column with the "p" value. In addition, from Table 7 I have removed the "U", i.e. the value of the Mann-Whitney test used for small sizes of both groups (less than 20). I left "Z", which is the value of the Mann-Whithey test taken when the size of both groups is greater than 20. Moreover, from the paragraph before Table 7, I deleted the last sentence regarding the test result "Z corrected". I have removed the wording "(with continuity correction)" from the caption in Table 7.
Table 7 Why do you present the values as a sum rang and not the means or medians?
Instead of the sum rang, I put the median.
Line 578 Please highlight the practical significance of your newly developed approach. For example, could this be used in agricultural extension or animal welfare inspections? Or is it only intended as a scientific tool?
I considered the practical significance of the developed approach to the assessment of livestock facilities in the form of a paragraph in the Conclusions chapter.
Line 716 “Von Keyserlingk” instead of “von Keyserlingk”.
I made the appropriate correction.
Line 742 “De Boyer des Roches” instead of “de Boyer des Roches”
I made the appropriate correction.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript has been properly revised by considering all the comments raised in reviewing.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for kindly accepting and approving the changes and additions to the article.
