Broiler Breeders Fed Diets Supplemented with Conventional or Lipid Matrix Microencapsulated Trace Minerals at Standard or High Levels: Part I. Influence on Production, Skeletal Integrity, and Intestinal Histomorphology of Broiler Breeders^†

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The manuscript includes a series of tests focusing on bone integrity, yet the keyword bone is not mentioned in the list of keywords.

2. It has been observed that the dietary formulation for the MI300 group, specifically the corn content provided to broiler breeders aged 35-49 weeks, is inconsistent with the other three treatment groups. The reasons for this discrepancy should be clarified to ensure the study's methodology is transparent and the results are comparable across all groups.

3. The reference list appears to be outdated, with a notable lack of citations from the past five years. It is recommended that the authors update their literature review to include more recent studies, which would enhance the relevance and currency of the research presented. The order of cited references appears to be incorrect. Please see lines 255 and 270 for specific instances.

4. On page 217, the text appears to be part of the main body of the manuscript and should be separated from the table annotations. It is important to maintain a clear distinction between the narrative of the results and the supplementary information provided in tables to ensure clarity and readability for the readers.

5. It has been noted that there are several instances where the presentation of P-values appears to be incorrect, specifically with the notation P>.05. This is observed on lines 171, 174, 189, 219, 222, 224, and 260.

6. In line 302 of the manuscript, it is mentioned that the manganese content in the tibia increases with the increase in trace mineral dosage. Is there any supporting research that corroborates this dose-dependent change?

Please ensure that these comments are addressed in the revised manuscript to improve the quality and credibility of the study.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see comment responses attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript describes an investigation of microencapsulated trace minerals fed to broiler breeders. The topic is interesting and important to the broiler breeder industry and researchers to improve productivity and skelatal integrity of broiler breeders due to applications of trace mineral technology. The manuscript is well-written and provides the expected and necessary information to understand the methods, results, and conclusions. Furthermore, the Conclusions are supported by the presented results and consistent with the discussion. The tables are easy to read and necessary.

Line 91 - Were the treatments assigned randomly within the room and/or block?

Author Response

Thank you for your comment, please find the response attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Respected authors

All opinion was emitted with all respect to the efforts of the authors for the preparation of the experiment and its report

General

Very interesting introduction, giving the reader an important insight into the topics to be covered in the article.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of 2 levels (high and normal) of dietary inclusion of inorganic minerals supplied as protected microencapsulated or free premix forms on broiler breeder production parameters, intestinal and bone parameters. However, concern about the next points are present: 1) Describe the productive performance item in the materials and methods; 2) Reference the methodologies adopted; 3) Improve the discussion with information from other authors, providing support for the statements presented; 4) Pay attention to the journal's rules.

The experiment was carried out in an acceptable manner, the number of the experimental units is correct, the procedures, techniques and methods are adequate, the experimental error is acceptable.

Specific comments

P3L128: Please include a topic about performance indexes.

2.2. Productive performance

2.3. Jejunum Mucosal Histomorphology

2.4. Bone mineral composition and characteristic

2.5. Statistical analysis

P3L128: Jejunum Mucosal Histomorphology - reference methodology used

P3L136: 5-mm or 5 μm ?

P3L143-144: “VH/CD and villi surface = [(upper villi width + bottom villi width)/2] X villus height” use the Word formulas feature and follow the journal's rules by placing it after the paragraph, for better visualization of the formula.

The villi surface was calculated using 10 readings per replicate per variable, according to the formulas (1):

P3L145: Bone mineral composition and characteristic - reference methodology used

P4L163: P<0.05 replace with p < 0.05 - The “P” should be lowercase and italic. Also check this throughout the manuscript.

P4L171: (P<.05) replace with (p < 0.05)

P4L174: P<.005 replace with p < 0.005

P4L179: P<0.05 replace with p < 0.05

P5L183: (P<0.05) replace with (p < 0.05)

P5L184-185: Describe this information and formulas in item 2.2. Productive performance, in Materials and Methods

P5L189: P<.005 replace with (p < 0.005)

P5L198: (P<0.05) replace with (p < 0.05)

P5L203-205: Making a mention of a possible interaction despite it not being significant (p > 0.05) is plausible. (P6L208-209) Now, stating that there is a significant effect with p < 0.15 is forcing a result, given that the significance of 0.05 was predefined. Mentioning this variable (tibia length) as significant should be disregarded

P6L215: (P<0.05) replace with (p < 0.05)

P6L219: (P>.05) replace with (p > 0.05)

P6L222: P<.05 replace with (p < 0.05)

P6L224: P<.05 replace with (p < 0.05)

P7L233: P<.05 replace with (p < 0.05)

P7L260: P<.05 replace with (p < 0.05)

P8L272: Ma et al. (2011) - Citation outside the journal's standards

P8L274-276: “In contrast, we did not observe significant differences among TM form treatments for jejunal VH, CD, or VH/CD ratio, which may be a different response than observed by other researchers who only evaluated the ileum.” - Bring the references of these other researchers mentioned.

P8L288-306: Interesting discussion, but lack of citations to contribute information. Where are the previously developed articles that lend credibility to this information?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please find responses below. I also wanted to thank you for the time and effort that it took to give detailed comments with line numbers, this helped tremendously when editing the paper. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors made significant improvements to the manuscript.