HERD BOOKS

 

Herd Books is a Cow/Calf cattle management & age verification software program designed for commercial Canadian Beef producers, with 'herds' up to 500 head. You may have records for up to four herds for cross breeding, family members, or to accommodate more cattle.  Herd Books is available to trial at no cost.

 

Everything is set up for ease and speed of both entry and access. As an example, a new calf can be entered with a few mouse clicks - faster than you can write it in your calving book. When you enter a new calf all the information that can be pre-entered is done for you, most other info is selected by clicking on items from popup lists that you can edit to suit your operation.

 

Herd Books is produced on our Alberta ranch. I wrote the basics for it in the early '80s finding that without keeping good livestock records, a cow that has once earned favor could get by at cull time even though she not weaning decent calves - she's a good cow.  It also allow you to age verify calves for the CCIA age verification program.

 

Herd Books helps you spot that "good cow" at a glance, the average daily gain of her calves, any remarks, condition, sire, pasture, dam, age, health, treatments, temperament, feet, bag, cow's photo etc. are displayed on her page. All her calves record items, weight, ease, etc. can be compared to each other on the right side of her calf page.

 

Search will find and assemble a group of cattle by any criteria and print any or all of their record items. Lists of Cows or calves can be made and ordered for comparing one to another for one or many attributes. Cows that have been culled are not removed from your files but are separated from your active herd when working cows.

 

Search will also save it's results as a .csv file which can then be opened by most spread sheets. The combination of these two functions allows you to send and import information about your cattle to and from others. If you add cow photos to your cow's records you can use Search Photos to id cows that have lost tags.

Breeding cycles and weaning weights for your herd can be compared by year to any other year, pasture to pasture/years, by means of viewing or printing graphs.

 

There is a family tree for each cow that will take you to any cow's record that is in her tree. The tree will help you spot genetic trends in cow lines when culling or choosing replacements.

 

CCIA tags: The program will create all of the upload files you will need for the CLIA to: Age verify, Cross reference, Retire, Move in and Move out cattle. It also has a form for your cull cows that have never been tagged. If doing CLIA's spread sheets gives you a headache, my forms will help. Really! Usual comment - "That was easy." You can import tag reader files to input your CCIA tags and also weights (.csv files). If you buy feeder cattle the Move-In form will save them to a file for recording treatments and to fill the Move-out form when you sell them.

 

If you currently have your cows and calves entered on simple spread sheets which can be saved as a .csv file, Herd Books will import most or all of your information into it's records.

 

The program will even print you a pocket calving book.

 

To use the software, all your cattle must have a Tag# or name.

 

Herd Books, as a beef cattle record keeping system, has the herd management tools to help you build and maintain a productive herd.

 

The Herd Books program has been updated for the spring of 2012, the current version being 3.0.1.9 and includes a Test herd for trial purposes. As many of the functions will only work if they have cattle records to work with, the Test herd will allow you to see how the program works without entering any of your records into the program. You can switch between using the Test herd and your own herd with a mouse click.

 

Here's some things you should know:

Alberta - The new ALIS (Alberta Livestock Identification Services) has made age verification mandatory as of January 2009 for Alberta producers.
Alberta - Cattle born after Jan 1st 2009 must be age verified before leaving the farm.
Alberta - All livestock producers must obtain a Premises ID# from Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development.
Alberta - Will require all feedlots with more than 1000 head (down from 5000) to send a Move In and a Move Out file to the CLIA for cattle bought and sold within 7 days
Alberta - Birth records consisting of the animals ID tag, CCIA number and if verified by date of birth, the birth date, or the starting date of calving that the calves were verified with, must be kept for 10 years. (For your protection I would suggest you have a method to link these numbers to the Dam and siblings.)

Alberta's Traceability Cattle Identification Regulation is a must read.

Everybody else - Will likely be doing the above soon.

CLIA - On Jan 1st 2010 the old CCIA bar code dangle tags will become obsolete and animals leaving the farm must have an RFID tag applied. If you wish to verify the new tag and the dangle tag has been verified with the CLIA then the Cross-reference form should be used instead of the Birth date (age verification) form. Note--even if the dangle tag was never verified you are not allowed to remove the old tag. When you ruin a tag the CLIA wants you to 'Retire' the tag. You use this form for animals that have died on your place as well.

Visit our Features page for sample screenshots and a more information on the program.

Herd Books is available to try at no charge for 90 days - please visit our Order page for more information.