Drought Shocks and Gearing Impacts on the Profitability of Sheep Farming

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper provides a sound base for understanding risk in a production setting. The methods are appropriate. I have two concerns with the paper.

1. How are the authors connecting the financial statements across years. I was unclear how this was done. Covering a ten-year time period, this is a key piece to the methodology. It probably has been done in the Excel spreadsheet, it would be helpful if that was added either to the body of the paper or appendix where the financial measures are defined.
2. The conclusion  seems weak. There is a lot of good information provided in the research but the conclusion leaves me wondering why the research was important.

Author Response

The responses to reviewer 1 are attached in the word file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

See attached file summary 

Godfrey et al

This is a very good paper but it would benefit from improvement in clarity.  The authors need to remember that the reader do not always understand the level of detail they do o given concepts so they need to be speeled out clearly. Therefore, minor to moderate changes are required.  But I believe these will be easy for the authors to achieve.

Figure 1 – define all the acronyms in the heading / footnote – figures need to be stand alone.

 Lines 112 – 116 there is no detail on when replacement ewes brought in, what age, month and what % of total ewes replaced each year etc.  When does lambing occur, what is the lambing percentage, what is culling age of ewes, what is annual death rate of ewes etc.  These must be in the model but the reader has no detail.

Table 1 – formatting issue re Scenario 1 not being on own row

Lines 110 to 188.  Is there anyway of verifying (validating) the stock numbers, performance and values used/produced etc match against real data (even industry averages) so the reader has confidence the results presented are realistic?  I don’t see references throughout methods re the data used matching industry (real life) values – maybe I missed that but, if that is the case this does indicated this was not clearly identified.

Table 2 – left justify categoeis not centre in first column.  What does ‘parameter’ mean – needs to be defined somewhere in heading or footnote. Where are the sources/references for the data used (i.e. industry data reference etc) in the model?

Table 3 – again references for these correlations or justification for the values presented is needed in heading or footnote.  i.e. could can the reader be assured the correlations are realistic not just made up?

Figure 4 a – what do the values ii the horizontal bar mean? There needs to be a series of details either in the heading or footnote of table to explain this and the values on the right of the figure.

Figure 4c – as per figure 4a what do the horizontal bars mean and their values and what do the values in the right of figure mean – a lot more detail needed in footnote etc 

Figure 5a and b. Define in heading (D:A the various 10, 20, 30 etc) in brackets to match the values on the figure itself so reader better knows these are linked and only values

Throughout text the paper talks about ‘scenarios’ (i.e. scenario 5) or the writing is specific i.e. ‘Scenario x showed’ or the ‘D:A ratios of.. ‘ – there needs to be consistency so the reader better understands and is not confused.  I believe it should always include the wording of ‘D:A’ and ‘scenario’ in a given sentence to make it clearer and more consistent

Table 4 – footnote needs to explain all acronyms

Line 281 – can the authors make a comment what might be impact (positive or negative) of selling ewes in regards to their results they have found

Tables in Appendix A have no headings which limits their use

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The responses to reviewer 2 are attached in the word file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Attached

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The responses to reviewer 3 are attached in the word file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx