Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript builds on previous work of some of the authors in which they evaluated the predictive ability of intestinal integrity index for poultry flocks production parameters. Here the authors, by implementing a series of improvements to the current index, suggest an enhanced one that perfoms at least equal or even better than the existing one. The poultry industry is expected to benefit from a more accurate tool.

The manuscript is well written with clear objectives. Methodology employed is fully described and results are well presented. Any questions regarding interpretation of results and misclassification bias that could be raised by reader are answered in advance by the authors in the discussion part. Moreover the authors themselves note limitations of the study.

The authors should remove lines 88-91 and 139-142 from the manuscript since the included text is irrelevant and complete the sentence in the title of Table 4.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Many thanks!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Swirski et al. evaluated the relationship between data-driven modification of intestinal integrity index and performance parameters in poultry production. The manuscript is very novel, well written and has highlighted both the strengths and underlying assumptions/bias of the model in monitoring the flock health status and making a decision for the poultry producers. I suggest a few minor changes before publication.

Line 41: Add space before “IT”

Line 88-91: Please remove this unnecessary information. Similar in line 139-142

Line 108-113: Please keep all these sentences in a paragraph.

Line 153: Typo ‘an” instead of “and”

Line 192: Add a comma between “index” and “the”

Line 248: Remove italics from “both”

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Many thanks!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx