FarmWorks Software

[WoolyBear]

Does anyone out there have any experiences about Farm Stock livestock software by FarmWorks? We're looking into some sort of computer record keeping for our cattle and sheep. It looks like it should work for weighings, medications and vaccination records in addition to the calving records and predigree tracking too.

Any thoughts or opinions would be appreciated. Maybe there is even something better out there.???

Thank you and Merry Christmas

[grassfarmer]

Sorry to be primative woolybear but the only thing I know better is a pen and paper! In my opinion unless you are running a fairly large operation I simply do not see the point. I attended a farm demonstration day a while back where they demonstated swath grazing, condition scoring cows etc etc - all things aimed at allowing us to survive the disaster we are currently going through. The only thing that wasted my time that day was a demonstration by a computer nerd on cattle management software. He was constantly amazed at how how brilliant his system was that it could tell you what day a cow had calved each of the last 6 years - even in reverse order!It could tell you the cows that had weaned the heaviest calves etc etc. The point he didn't seem to grasp was that it was only relaying information back to him that he had collected first and given to it. Either typing in a birth date or jotting down a weight at the scale to enter in the computer later.
What is the point? he was trying to sell us a system that needed a $3000 computer to run it plus a palm pilot to carry with you to transfer things onto the computer from.
Total garbage in my mind especially when you consider the average beef herd size in Alberta. This is not to say that computer programs don't have their part to play in agriculture and in beef production.

[WoolyBear]

I appreciate the comments about the good old calving book, and the chute side records sheets. Thats where all of the information came from that we are currently collecting. I was wondering whats out there to "organize" the information that we are collecting so that we are not going through yearly files looking to see when so and so was born, vaccinated, or if some of the things that we see in our herd is showing up more often, or maybe
less often. Given all the numbers that CCIA, Quality Starts Here, and all the other government programs thats ourthere, I seem to be getting a memory block when I start looking through the various scriblers to see when Cow # 283 was born and whether or not the heifer that died this morning was hers or not (just an example),

We've looked into various software programs, and they all seem to dedicate themselves to one type of animal. With sheep and cattle on our farm, we weren't wanting to have to overload an already underpowered computer with 2 or 3 programs when 1 might do the trick. Farm Stock, from what we read online, seems to be what we are looking for. The salesman that we spoke too seemed to
have all our questions answered and the price was in the right range, considering that we are hoping to still be in this industry for a few more years. Hopefully it does the trick for us.

Thank you again.

[smcgrath76]

The difference between data and information is huge. Some of us use data in our operations, few of us use information effectively.
When looking at a software package for use on commercial cows I would suggest a couple of things to look for.
1. calving distribution report (age, calving period segregated)
2. ability to pull summary information that you can combine with your financial information to improve management
3. user friendly with user support

Also, it is nice if you can work with a gorup to do some benchmarking of your operation.

[redcountry]

You might look at cattlemax software.
download a demo and play with it.

I can tell you the support is second to none, these people will go to any length to help if you want something that is not in the system and it makes sense they will use it in their upgrade.

As far as A $3000. computer!!!
today you can get a good computer for $1200. with all the bells .