The challenge of maintaining herd records is a familiar struggle for many cow-calf producers who grapple with balancing detailed documentation and practical, cost-efficient management. However, there are multiple solutions available to help transition from traditional paper to platforms that make data input and analysis more productive. During Smart Farming week, we will learn more about five record-keeping options available on the market today.
CattleMax is an online record-keeping service used by ranches to store cattle inventory, herd health records, breeding and pregnancy records, calving data, weaning data and sync data from breed associations.
Terrell Miller, founder and CEO of CattleMax, says the program is designed for commercial and registered cow-calf producers of all herd sizes.
“It’s currently used by ranchers worldwide in herds from 10 head to 10,000 plus,” Miller says. “CattleMax has been around for over 25 years and is designed in the U.S. by cattle ranchers. It’s supported by ranchers who use the software in their own herds.”
CattleMax was built to be a complete record-keeping system with features like pasture activity, hay production, equipment maintenance and tasks.
“The most used features across users include breeding, pregnancy and calving records; weights, health treatments and pasture movements,” Miller adds.
Commercial plans start at $12 for the first 50 head of cattle and increase with herd size. Registered plans start at $16 for the first 50 head and increase with herd size. Both commercial and registered operations with more than 1,000 head have additional plans with features better suited for large operations.
Customer Feedback
Manager of Stalwart Ranches in Texas, Bill Cawley uses most of the features CattleMax offers to keep data and records on their registered and commercial cow herd.
“We run about 300 registered cows and about 3,700 commercial cows,” Cawley explains. “My favorite thing is that you can get reports to go to the [ranch] owner at just a touch of a button. You can get reports so that they actually know what’s going on like inventories. It’s not, ‘Let me find it, let me count it up.’ It’s just right there. We have EIDs (electronic identification ear tags) in all these cattle now. We can scan those and run off a list of calves in just a matter of minutes. It’s what everybody else in the world has in business, where you can run a report and don’t have to go through all your paper files to try to find something.”
Cawley adds having all their records on CattleMax makes taxes much easier for both the rancher and their accountant.
“We can run that report off and it’s in black and white, It’s easy for those guys to understand,” Cawley says. “There’s just so much that’s at your fingertips.”
Cawley has been using CattleMax for more than 20 years, so the program functions are simple for him to understand with many years of experience. However, he recommends CattleMax to ranchers and cattlemen because it is so user-friendly.
“It has what the everyday person needs on it, and you can get a little more technical if you want it to,” Cawley says. “Sometimes people don’t know what they’re looking at, and this is pretty self-explanatory for the most part. It’s been a really good company for us.”
The only limitation to CattleMax, like many record keeping programs, is that the animals need to be individually identified. Find more about CattleMax at cattlemax.com
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