Cattle.com

Blog Archive August 2008

Recent Sire Updates

Cattle.com Visitor Reviews

  • DejaVu
    Had an awesome bull calf out of a Warhorse cow. Short, stocky calf.
  • Caddy Shack
    Has a Caddy Shack heifer.  She is very eye catching. She is nice and square.Has good muscle tone and lots of hair i like her.
Internet Forum Buzz


Recent Directory Updates


Cow-Calf 007

I've tried a few cattle management packages out there but have never really found one that's as customizable as I would like.  Don't get me wrong, they're quality programs but I'm picky and have actually made my own web based management software so I can check it on my Treo while working cattle.  While I like what I've put together so far, developing cattle management software that works for everything is a HUGE undertaking that I have no plans on finishing.

In hopes of finding something that would prevent me from wasting more time developing my own program.  I decided to try out some new software I saw linked to on Showsteers.com last week, Cow-Calf 2007. 

My first impressions is the user interface isn't nearly as refined as the interface of a program like Cattlemax but it's more intuitive for a no-frills person like myself.  The sheer amount of options makes up for that.  A quick glance at the types of data that it stores is quite impressive.  It can keep track of everything associated with your herd from feed inventory to real estate.  I really can't think of an action or piece of information that this software doesn't have the ability to track.

However, when trying to start dealing with that information, things went down hill.....fast.  While going through the pressing button stage of things, the program crashed half a dozen times, all on the reports pages.  I actually called the company about it and they said it's because the program doesn't know what to do since there isn't any data.  Well, that's because the programmer didn't tell it to say there isn't any data.

Any time you leave one page of information, you have to click save or your changes will be erased.  While this is understandable, it's not ideal for a situation where you are dealing with large amounts of information.  Clicking save every time you decide to go to another section of the program got boring fast.  I got tired of doing it about five head into an attempt to enter our herd's data.  I'd highly prefer for the software to save my changes if I move to another page of the program.

Another issue I had, and this doesn't have anything to do with the software itself, is the fact that the price isn't listed on the site for the program .  Yes, the price is clearly visible on http://www.magnumdigital.com/cowmanager.htm, ($339 for the full version) but it's not on the site EDJE just added and you don't see the price until you have actually put the software in a cart.

Cow-Calf 007 looks like it will be a great piece of software once it's completely debugged.  If you have patience for minor annoyances it does come with free updates so it should only be a matter of time.  However, I simply cannot recommend buying a $300+ piece of software that is as unstable as this. 

In the end the thing that will prevent me from using it is the lack of an online feature that would allow me to check records from my phone while out in the pasture.  Of course, I don't know of any herd management software that does that....yet.

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Microsoft Photosynth

Microsoft recently launched a little application that can only be described as "very cool".  It takes images you upload to their server and creates 3-D models of them that you can then display on your own website.  On top of that, it's completely free, the only catch is your images are public as soon as you upload them.

Here's a synth I tried did with a series of pictures I took of a heifer from the Kris Black sale with a Wagonmaster calf at side (my obligatory "I couldn't get calf to stand right" excuse goes here)...

Make sure you mouse over the cow and then drag the image around.  You're able to move about 180 degrees around her.  If I would have been able to get around her further it would even do a complete model.  You can even zoom in to an amaingly close zoon by using the wheel on your mouse.

By clicking the relevant arrows you can move to the side/top/rear.  A person could get a really good view of an animal if they could find a set of pictures put into a synth.  Of course, that means you can't hide the faults nearly as easily as a regular picture too...

For more information, check out http://www.photosynth.com.  As soon as it stops raining down here I'm going to try to get a set of pictures that could really utilize the technology of Photosynth and upload a better example.


Craigslist

I have become obsessed with checking the local Craigslist.  If you are unfamiliar with it, it's sort of a cross between your local feed store bulletin board and ebay but completely and totally free.

Not only can you find good deals on the site, it evidently has a huge viewership even in the ag sections.  We put a few steers up on the site in late May when I was knee deep in diapers and somebody had backed out on a few steers they committed to buying earlier in the season.  We got three calls within 24-hours on the steers.

Stuff listed on Craigslist gets attention QUICK.  Take this example...


CM Stock trailer---I think 14 ft, bought approximately 5 years ago from D&D in Seguin, in very good condition, has small dent in front, one small rusted place, and a small cracked window. Floor boards have little to no wear. Wired for lights, used only to haul 4-H goats and the occassional trip to the dump.

We are moving and need to sell the trailer in the next few weeks.

They were asking $1,000 for that trailer.  Now I have no need for another trailer but a 5yo D&D 14 ft trailer is worth significantly more than $1,000 and for that price I could find a use for it.  The ad was listed at 7:30 PM on a Tuesday night.  I e-mailed at 9:30 that night and it had already been sold.

To find your local Craigslist page, just go to craigslist.com and then click the most relevant regions you can find.  Then look under "For Sale" and "Farm+Garden".


Legacy Plus Joint Venture

While moving the site over to the new layout, I was reminded of the little story from last August regarding the Legacy Plus bull and the lawsuit over it.  Our blog on it has been the number one result for "Glover Cattle Company" on Google (Link) which I doubt they're too happy about.  At least with the switch to the new layout that link will eventually expire.

I'm very late to notice but the case was dismissed in March of this year.

For those unfamiliar with the situation, Legacy Plus was a high dollar Maine Anjou bull.  He was born in March of 1997 if you believe court documents, or May 3rd if you believe the registration documents that put him in a younger class at shows.  Long story short, he was syndicated, believed to have died, and then showed up a few years later to the shock of the syndicate members who thought he was dead.  Hartman Cattle Company and the rest of the Legacy Plus Joint Venture filed a lawsuit against Glover Cattle Company and Ronnie Glover in Nebraska.

The last two words of that paragraph are the kicker.  The case was dismissed March 3rd of this year after it was decided that the Nebraska court had no jurisdiction over the defendants located in Oklahoma.  Most of the court documents focus on whether or not Nebraska has jurisdiction.  The only thing the slightest bit interesting was a claim in the court documents that Ronnie Glover claims Mike Hartman told him to "kill that son of a b***h!" (in reference to Legacy Plus) after the bull had developed a swollen scrotum.  In court documents he claims that's the last conversation he ever had with Mike Hartman and that he never agreed to actually euthanize the bull.

As it seems with most legal maneuvering, it was ended on a technicality and no real judgment on the actual case was made but I'll guarantee you the laywers got their fees.

(all of the above is based solely on publicly available court documents)


Cattle.com Directory

We've got the submission page up for the Cattle.com directory.  You can find it and add your site by CLICKING HERE or going to the "Directory" link at the top of the site and then click "Submit Site" at the bottom of the page.

Will you get any traffic from it?  Who knows, but don't expect too much.  After looking through the server logs of a few sites we manage for people, Cattle.com doesn't send much directory traffic to sites when compared to other sources.  The Cattle.com directory only sent about 12% of the incoming traffic for a site listed in EDJE and Showsteers.com so I would definitely look for a link on some of those sites first. 

If you are looking for traffic from directories consider the following...

  1. EDJE
    Yeah, your link will be somewhere around #1,238 of 10,000 links on the front page but it just plain old sends traffic.
  2. Showsteers.com
    If you are a clubby guy, you need to be listed on Showsteers.com, there's no other way to put it.  I've seen men who didn't know what a mouse is who knew what Showsteers.com is.
  3. Breed Associations
    If you are a seedstock producer or just a member of a breed organization, don't hesitate to find out how you can get a link from your breed association's website.  The types of people coming from those links will be extremely targetted visitors.
  4. Partner Breeders
    Link exchanges are nothing new but it seems very few ranches actually take advantage of link exchanges with their friends and cooperators.  One very large Angus ranch I know of gets a significant amount of traffic from one of the largest Angus ranches in the nation.

However, it's free to list sites on Cattle.com so you could have saved the time you wasted reading this and submitted your site a few minutes ago.

Be very hesitant about paying $100+ for links from other directories unless they can give you very specific examples of how much traffic they've sent past customers.


Cattle.com Videos

My personal favorite part of the site, our videos, are now back.  They've been MIA since we were hacked by the widespread SQL injection attack but I finally got off my rear and redid the data for all 101 videos.

You can find them from any page of the site by clicking the "Video" link on the top of the site.

We've also switched all of our videos to Flash from Windows Media Player.  While WMV files were adequate and most computers have Windows Media Player, Flash is still the king of online videos.  This format also decreases the file sizes by about 20%.  Now, it will only take two hours to load a video on a dial up connection rather than the typical two days.


New Cattle.com Setup

I've decided to go a completely different route with the layout and style of Cattle.com.  It was a lot more cluttered than I like with a bit too much focus on the site layout rather than the content.  Bottom line, the idea for the site got too big for the resources behind it.

By scrapping the delusions of granduer, I can get back to developing the kind of site I wanted from the start.  This site has always been a bit of a hobby site for me and now I'm going to go back to running it like something I like doing instead of just another task on my schedule.

This layout also loads MUCH faster as it's about 15% the size of the old site in terms of the amount of data you have to download to view any given page.


Recent Sire Updates

Cattle.com Visitor Reviews

Internet Forum Buzz

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August Cattle Site Market Share Report

  1. Cattletoday.com 31.90%
  2. CattleNetwork.com 20.97%
  3. Showsteers.com 6.82%
  4. Cattle.com 6.68%
  5. EDJECattle.com 6.56%
  6. Cattlerange.com 5.85%
  7. Showcattle.com 4.45%
  8. Beefmagazine.com 4.11%
  9. Clubcalves.com 2.94%
  10. Cattlepages.com 2.54%
The only major change from last month was Cattlerange.com dropping from #3 to #6. Showsteers.com and EDJECattle.com are both showing the expected seasonal increases in traffic as the Northern steer buyers get into gear to spend money.


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