Generic Relationships between Field Uses and Their Geographical Characteristics in Mountain-Area Dairy Cattle Farms

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comments:

Overall, the manuscript is still interesting, but the authors needs to take this manuscript more seriously and the figures and tables need to be revised carefully. Also, there are some typos that need to be checked and corrected carefully.

 

Specific comments:

Line 64: “This literature…” should be “This study…”.

Line 74：How to select the 100 farmers? Was the field research or questionnaire research conducted? The specific research form needs to be provided.

Line 84: please complete the table 1.

Line 108: The detailed means of “suckler cows” should be added.

Line 114-125: Is this paragraph for the analysis method of this article or is it a reference to someone else's analysis method? Further description is needed.

Figure 1,2,3: The red line below the text needs to be removed.

Line 143: “*** P < 0.0001”, it is right?

Line 150: the detailed textual description of the classification criteria for the 7 classes of grazed-only fields should be added.

Line 174：“*** P < 0.001”, it is right? Similar errors will not be listed, please check carefully to modify.

Table 3: from “total grazing intensity” to “altitude”, why are there no standard deviations or error for these values? Suggested additions. The value of “area” and “distance from farmstead” should be checked---the “,” should be “.”.

Table 4,5: why are there no standard deviations or error for these values? Suggested additions.

Table 5: The value of “number of cuts”, “area” and “distance from farmstead” should be checked---the “,” should be “.”.

Figure 5: the value of horizontal axis should be checked---the “,” should be “.”.

Line 279: “most of the extant research has…” should be “most of the extant researches has…”

Line 284-314: This section requires a more in-depth discussion of the relationship between the cited literature and the data in this paper, rather than a simple accumulation of references.

Line 289: “……France, Spain and the UK and observed…” should be “…France, Spain, and the UK, and observed…”. There are some similar errors that need to be changed.

Line 306: “Various forms of …” should be “Various farms of…”.

Line 315-321: The sentence is too long, and it should be two or more sentences.

Line 325: “Here, our study design collected…” should be “Here, our study collected…”.

Line 355: “…France, England and Spain,…”should be “…France, England, and Spain,…”.

Line 359: “…dependent t on the …” ???

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer 1,

You will find below our answers to your questions and remarks. concerning our submission (ID agriculture-1330585, 22 July 2021).

We have taken all suggestions into account and hope that the corrected manuscript will meet your expectations.
With our thanks.

General comments

Overall, the manuscript is still interesting, but the authors needs to take this manuscript more seriously and the figures and tables need to be revised carefully. Also, there are some typos that need to be checked and corrected carefully.

We have carefully reviewed our text to improve it, taking into account all your comments and requests.

Specific comments

Line 64: “This literature…” should be “This study…”

"This literature" refers to all the works cited in the previous lines and not to our study. We proposed a new formulation.

Line 74：How to select the 100 farmers? Was the field research or questionnaire research conducted? The specific research form needs to be provided.

Details of the surveys, the questionnaires and the selection of farmers were provided. The research forms are in French with more than 12 pages including several tables, and seemed to have no direct interest for the readers. These forms could however be translated and proposed as annexes if necessary.

Line 84: please complete the table 1.

We specified the abbreviations in table 1.

Line 108: The detailed means of “suckler cows” should be added.

We specified this particularity.

Line 114-125: Is this paragraph for the analysis method of this article or is it a reference to someone else's analysis method? Further description is needed.

This paragraph describes our method, for which we used our previous analysis (Garcia-Launay et al. 2012), and applied an aggregation protocol around existing clusters. We modified the paragraph in order to give more precision clarification on the steps of the used method.

Figure 1,2,3: The red line below the text needs to be removed.

We removed these red lines in the 3 figures.

Line 143: “*** P < 0.0001”, it is right?

Yes, it is right with P > 0.0001. However, we corrected the mistake under the tables 3, 4 and 5.

Line 150: the detailed textual description of the classification criteria for the 7 classes of grazed-only fields should be added.

We added the information required.

Line 174：“*** P < 0.001”, it is right? Similar errors will not be listed, please check carefully to modify.

The correct entry is P > 0.0001. We corrected the mistake under the tables 3, 4 and 5.

Table 3: from “total grazing intensity” to “altitude”, why are there no standard deviations or error for these values? Suggested additions. The value of “area” and “distance from farmstead” should be checked---the “,” should be “.”.

We added the standard deviation in the tables 3, 4 and 5, as demanded. We did not include the standard deviation of each value to make the tables smaller (given the number of columns) and easier to read.

The “,” were changed by “.”.

Table 4,5: why are there no standard deviations or error for these values? Suggested additions.

We added the standard deviation in the tables 4 and 5 too, as demanded.

Table 5: The value of “number of cuts”, “area” and “distance from farmstead” should be checked---the “,” should be “.”.

The “,” were changed by “.”.

Figure 5: the value of horizontal axis should be checked---the “,” should be “.”.

The “,” were changed by “.” in this figure.

Line 279: “most of the extant research has…” should be “most of the extant researches has…”.

This mistake has been corrected.

Line 284-314: This section requires a more in-depth discussion of the relationship between the cited literature and the data in this paper, rather than a simple accumulation of references.

We have revisited this paragraph, taking care to establish clearer links between our results and those of the authors cited.

Line 289: “……France, Spain and the UK and observed…” should be “…France, Spain, and the UK, and observed…”. There are some similar errors that need to be changed.

This mistake has been corrected. We have paid attention to this point throughout the text.

Line 306: “Various forms of …” should be “Various farms of…”.

We replaced “forms” by “types” to avoid confusion.

Line 315-321: The sentence is too long, and it should be two or more sentences.

We have cut this long sentence into two shorter sentences and simplified the text.

Line 325: “Here, our study design collected…” should be “Here, our study collected…”.

We have made this correction.

Line 355: “…France, England and Spain,…”should be “…France, England, and Spain,…”.

The comma has been added.

Line 359: “…dependent t on the …” ???

This extra letter has been removed.

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Introduction part should be improved.  Scientific question should be mentioned clearly and be well related to previous studies.  If possible, a hypothesis is needed.
2.  Some characteristics, such as starting use date, starting use date, and use duration,  are about time cycle.  Maybe circular statistics methods should be used. 
3.  the research design is based on investigation data. I am afraid, it is not easy to say that the cattle farmers decide how to make use of each field, which is mentioned in Line 395.  
4.  Figure 1-3 are nice, however, how they show "the grazed-only field classes were differentiated on various distance–area combinations (Figure 2)" (Line161-162). I mean, how difference is significant or not？

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

You will find below our answers to your comments and suggestions concerning our submission (ID agriculture-1330585, 22 July 2021).

We have taken this into account to improve our manuscript and hope that this corrected version will meet your expectations.

With our thanks.

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. Introduction part should be improved.  Scientific question should be mentioned clearly and be well related to previous studies.  If possible, a hypothesis is needed.

We have improved and expanded the introduction, with more precise formulation of the research questions and hypotheses.

2. Some characteristics, such as starting use date, starting use date, and use duration, are about time cycle. Maybe circular statistics methods should be used.

We did not think it necessary to carry out a new statistical analysis, as our data covered one grazing season, which can be considered as a linear time event. Data covering a full year or several years would indeed have constituted a time cycle.

3. the research design is based on investigation data. I am afraid, it is not easy to say that the cattle farmers decide how to make use of each field, which is mentioned in Line 395.

We completed the sentence with “area” that was missing in the first formulation. We tempered the sentence with a more general formulation:”their fields” rather than “each field”.

4. Figure 1-3 are nice, however, how they show "the grazed-only field classes were differentiated on various distance–area combinations (Figure 2)" (Line161-162). I mean, how difference is significant or not？

We added the precision (Figure 2 and table 3) at the end of the sentence. The significant differences are to read in the tables, the geographical characteristics (in particular the combinations) are more easy to see on the figures.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

General comments: The manuscript has been greatly improved and still need serious revision.

Line 161, 193, 254: I think “**P<0.01” can express your meaning, “***P<0.0001” should be replaced by “** P<0.01” in Table 2 and 3.

Table 3, 4, 5: for example, why “4.8 c (12.32)”? I think it should be “4.8 (12.32) c”, the SD should be at the front of the letter.

Figure 3, 4: The red line below the letters (IC, iC, eC and so on) needs to be removed. Similar errors will not be listed, please check carefully to modify.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Below you will find your report with our answers to each of your comments.

We apologise for the many imperfections in the 2 previous versions and we thank you for your interest in our study.

Sincerely.

 

General comments:

The manuscript has been greatly improved and still need serious revision.

We reviewed again carefully our manuscript and made small corrections in the text.

We verified the tables and, over the required corrections, we saw and corrected few mistakes in the number of stars in the last column (P): in table 4 (1 correction in row 'area') and in table 5 (2 corrections in rows 'Milked cows grazing intensity' and 'Distributed forage').

We also homogenised the unit of the Altitude criterion by replacing 'm' with 'm.a.s.l.'

Line 161, 193, 254:

I think “**P<0.01” can express your meaning, “***P<0.0001” should be replaced by “** P<0.01” in Table 2 and 3.

We understand the meaning of your proposal, but we don’t understand your suggestion to replace the significant level ‘***’ by ‘**’.

With your permission, we propose to replace “***P<0.0001” which is indeed not used, by “***P<0.001”, and to retain in the caption the signification levels indicated in the tables.

Table 3, 4, 5:

For example, why “4.8 c (12.32)”? I think it should be “4.8 (12.32) c”, the SD should be at the front of the letter.

We corrected these mistakes. We apologise for our lack of attention.

Figure 3, 4:

The red line below the letters (IC, iC, eC and so on) needs to be removed. Similar errors will not be listed, please check carefully to modify.

We removed those red lines in figure 3 et 4.

 

Submission Date

22 July 2021

Date of this review

31 Aug 2021 13:52:23