Imagine if ranchers and livestock farmers could gain better insights into their businesses, improve sales through more focus on the key areas of their businesses, track stock movements automatically, store breeding and genealogy data in real time, monitor animal productivity metrics, track cull information and the like in a cost effective way. This would allow them to focus on what they do best, running their farm or stock yard rather than tedious administrative activities.

Well, the good news is you can! By finding the right software, your business can achieve a dramatic improvement in its performance. And what's more, there are quality livestock management solutions out there that will not stretch your wallet, and that's good for everyone...

Types of Livestock Management Software

Whether you are running a cattle ranch in the USA, a dairy farm in New Zealand or a plantation in South America, there is software specifically tailored to your operation. Just within livestock farming alone (ignoring the supply chain and related agri-businesses), there are software products for management of cattle, dairy, sheep, horses, pigs, goats, alpacas, wildlife (eg deer) and the like. Extending this further, for farmers there are full agri-business management software packages that handle livestock recordkeeping, farm accounting and budgeting, field mapping, crop recordkeeping, weather management, chemicals management and the like.

Typical types of livestock management software include:

• Livestock recordkeeping software - for enterprise stock management of herds and individual animals: cattle, dairy, pig, horses / equine, deer / wildlife, alpaca, sheep, etc
• Crop or horticulture recordkeeping software - for management of crops, pastures, land usage, orchards and the like
• Land or field mapping software - to manage your land in real time using mobile computer technologies
• Weather and rainfall software - for monitoring and managing natural conditions and how to respond to these strategically
• Feed management software - for livestock feed management
• Plant and equipment software - to manage assets, buildings and equipment in the agri industry
• Paddock and pasture management software
• Quality management software - tailored to ensuring quality standards are met both in primary production and in the agriculture supply chain
• Precision farming software - GPS and guidance software for farm vehicles
• Agri-business management software - a combination of a number of the above packages in one
• Aquaculture and fisheries management software - to manage your fishing or aqua business
• ... and more

It is also useful to distinguish standalone or separate software (more often used by small business) from solutions that integrate a range of modules into a combined software package. In addition, one can separate online / web based applications from packaged software products installed on your own PC / server

How Livestock Software Benefit You?

There are extensive benefits to finding software that is designed specifically for your business- that speaks your language and meets your specific operational requirements. This is most evident in small business software, where significant value is gained from this extensive functionality at a good value for money price point.

By freeing up time taken up by typically arduous manual administration tasks, you give yourself more time to focus on 'working on the business' - planning the most valuable activities to spend your time on. This improves your decision making significantly, as errors are eliminated and day to day activities become much less of a drag. This saves your business essential scarce resource, particularly over time.

What's more, by using livestock software, you introduce visibility of your business' operations. You can easily and quickly see all daily transactions, assess productivity metrics, track budgets, check stock levels (eg fertilizer), etc at the push of a button. Moreover, the task of capturing this data in the system is minimized. All of this amounts to a much more efficiently run operation- with less time and effort from you! Surely your time is important enough to you...

Through the key reporting, graphing and integration features of most systems, management reporting can also be done at the click of a button. Not only can you generate reports immediately for your accountant and for your own internal purposes, but you are able to export data and generate reportsw for the necessary enterprise / stock regulatory bodies, such as Breed societies.

Which Livestock Software is Right For You?

Regardless of your industry, size, or specific situation there is almost certainly a product out there that's right for you. The challenge is finding that ideal choice amongst the often overwhelming number of software packages on the market.

That's where Software Shortlist comes in. After talking with you about your requirements, we match you up with a shortlist of relevant providers that offer a solution that meets your needs. You can then arrange demonstrations or trials at your convenience.

It's a completely free service that uses our extensive knowledge and network of approved vendors to find solutions that meet your needs. We then make an introduction so you can complete your evalution process and discuss any questions with the appropriate person.

Importantly, we look broadly at livestock management software on the market, and are not tied to any one vendor. A few of the many leading livestock software vendors whose systems we have reviewed or matched people with include:

Get a free shortlist of relevant software by submitting your requirements below