Study-level quantitative data for nutritional history and compensatory growth in livestock

This dataset contains the study-level quantitative data used for the primary quantitative synthesis of nutritional restriction and compensatory growth in livestock. The primary quantitative synthesis comprises two independent cattle experiments: Wang et al. (2024), involving protein restriction followed by protein re-alimentation, and Cheng et al. (2026), involving energy restriction followed by energy re-alimentation. The primary outcome is average daily gain (ADG; kg d−1), and the effect measure is the mean difference in ADG. During restriction, the contrast is restricted minus continuously nourished control. During re-alimentation, the contrast is previously restricted minus continuously nourished control. Where group-level standard deviations were not directly available, approximate standard deviations were reconstructed from reported SEM values using SD = SEM × √n. These reconstructed variances are explicitly identified because the original SEM may be model-based. The repository contains extracted and derived study-level data from published studies and does not contain unpublished individual-animal raw data from the original investigators. The accompanying software record contains the R code used for variance reconstruction, effect-size calculation, random-effects meta-analysis, heterogeneity assessment and generation of the quantitative forest plots.