Effect of Cage and Floor Housing Systems on Muscle Fiber Characteristics, Carcass Characteristics, and Meat Quality of Slow-Growing Meat-Type Chickens
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This well-written paper study the effect of rearing system on meat quality of slow growing chickens. However, the use of outdoor system would have been interesting. The minor point is the use of pectoralis minor for histological analysis that is unusual and not well documented.
Comment to authors:
IMP and IMF need to be defined in the abstract (line 18).
Line 56-58, authors talk about the cages banning in EU for a welfare concerns but it is also a consumer demand to develop outdoor systems in chicken rearing.
Line 119: the use of pectoralis minor muscle for histological analysis in not usual and not well documented in the literature, why do not choose to treat Pectoralis major muscle for histological analysis. It will be interesting to see some images of the histological sections. It does not appear if authors used thigh muscle while data appears on its characterization in Table 6, and what thigh muscle was used for this study.
Line 137: why authors choose H-FABP while FABP4 is known to be expressed in chicken skeletal muscle.
Table 6: Measurement of muscle fiber size by CSA or min Ferets diameter is better to characterize muscle fibers than their density.
Line 291: did you mean rearing or earing?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Thanks for your manuscript. Could you please considered these points?
1- Please add cage and floor sizes
2- LN 18 :IMF and IMP; please add the whole words and then the abbreviation.
3- LN 53- Brisket is a cut of meat from the breast or lower chest of beef or veal; it is better to change to breast meat here and in the whole manuscript
4- LN 127slathered. I think you mean slaughtered; please check.
5- LN 133 H-FABP and other genes were measured in meat. I'm not sure the relationship these genes (fat metabolism) with meat quality. Could you pleas explain ?
6- In Tables, P-values please decrease decimals to 2 or 3 and 0.0001 should P<0.001
Author Response
1. Please add cage and floor sizes
Re: Done as suggested. Please see line 77-80 in the revised manuscript.
2. LN 18: IMF and IMP; please add the whole words and then the abbreviation.
Re: The full names of IMP and IMF were added in the abstract. Please see line 18-19 in the revised manuscript.
3. LN 53- Brisket is a cut of meat from the breast or lower chest of beef or veal; it is better to change to breast meat here and in the whole manuscript
Re: Done as suggested. Please see line 54 in the revised manuscript.
4. LN 127slathered. I think you mean slaughtered; please check.
Re: Thanks for the reminding. It is “slaughtered”. We corrected it in line 133 in the revised manuscript.
5. LN 133 H-FABP and other genes were measured in meat. I'm not sure the relationship these genes (fat metabolism) with meat quality. Could you please explain?
Re: These genes are previously reported important fat metabolism related genes. We added some explanation and reference citation in line 142-143 in the revised manuscript.
6. In Tables, P-values please decrease decimals to 2 or 3 and 0.0001 should P<0.001
Re: Done as suggested.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thanks for your revised manuscript
Author Response
Thank you for your comments
