Cattle Records in a Spreadsheet: Keep What Works, Fix What Breaks

A spreadsheet is a fair way to start keeping cattle records. One row per cow, a column for tag, birth year, last calf. It works while you have forty head and an evening to type.

Then it stops working. The sheet lives on one computer. You are at the chute and the file is at the house. A treatment goes in a notebook and never reaches the sheet. There are three copies, and you are not sure which one is current.

Where a spreadsheet breaks

• You cannot add a record from the pasture.
• It does not know a calf belongs to a cow, so nothing adds up per cow.
• Nothing reminds you of a booster or a withdrawal date.
• A mistyped tag is a mistake you may never find.

What Herd Advisor does with the same records

Each animal has its own record. A tag number alone is a record, or keep the whole story: breed, color, birth date, dam and sire, pasture, EID and notes. Each animal's page holds its photos, parents, every calf a cow has had, weights and growth, and a timeline of every record. You can filter that timeline to just treatments, weights, notes, breeding or calving, and fix a record that was entered wrong.

The herd timeline puts every calving, breeding, treatment, weight and move in date order. Filter it by record type, farm and date range.

Records are added where the cattle are. On the phone, it works offline and syncs when you are back in range. By voice, on iPhone, say "Hey Siri, cattle record with Herd Advisor," wait for the prompt, then say the record. On Android, use the in-app voice button.

Reports come from the records, not from formulas you built. The Herd Overview charts head count by category, age and pasture. The dashboard shows overdue reminders, cows due in 30 days, animals still on withdrawal, and head in each pasture. You can find any animal by tag, name or EID from the top of the dashboard.

You keep the spreadsheet

Every animal list and report can be exported to Excel or CSV, with the same sort, filters and columns you see on screen. Hand your banker an inventory or a buyer the weights on a set of calves. Your records are yours.

Bringing your sheet in

On the web, you can import animals and records from an Excel or CSV file of up to 10,000 rows, or paste rows in. Cows come in with dam and sire linked, along with weights, calving records and treatments. Open the account settings dropdown and choose Bulk Import Records. Or send the file to us and we'll load it.

Frequently asked questions