Numbers with names behind them
Every standard in the app is the industry's real one, cited to the institution that published it — BIF for calving ease and weaning weights, the 9-point scale for condition, price per hundredweight on sales. And where a number would be a guess, the app says so instead of guessing: no adjusted weight outside the standard's own age window, no dressing percent from a stale weigh-in, no calving rate before a single cycle has finished. Your records stay ones you can defend at the sale barn.
The season, scored like a stockman scores it
- Per-cow breeding cycles — natural service, AI, or embryo transfer — with pregnancy checks and a due date worked out from the 283-day gestation.
- Record the bull's turnout and removal and the app shows your calving window, plus a tightness rating: 65 days or under is the target, past 90 is strung out.
- Calving ease on the standard BIF 1–5 scale, every time — repeated hard pulls on one cow are what tell you something.
- Season scorecard: exposed, bred, open, calved, conception rate and calving rate. It stays blank until at least one preg check exists — a season going well never reads 0%.
205-day weaning weights, done by the book
- Weigh-ins with average daily gain from the second weight on. Birth weight recorded at calving becomes the calf's first weigh-in automatically.
- Adjusted weaning weight normalized to 205 days per the Beef Improvement Federation — so a February calf and a May calf compare fairly.
- It refuses outside BIF's own 160–250 day window rather than extrapolate. A figure that looks official while being wrong helps nobody.
- The herd report ranks the whole calf crop on one screen — weaning weight, adjusted weight, daily gain, body condition — and it will not rank pounds against kilograms.
Withdrawal dates the app remembers so you don't
- Treatments, vaccinations, and worming per animal or per herd, with a medicine cabinet that tracks what's on the shelf, what's expiring, and what's running low.
- Put the label's withdrawal period on the bottle once and every treatment saves the date beef and milk are clear — frozen at logging time, because it's a food-safety record.
- "Coming due" reads your next-due dates without crying wolf: log the next dose and the old reminder clears itself.
- Body condition on the 9-point cattle scale — always shown as "5 / 9", never a bare number, because cattle and goats don't share a scale.
Rest days that count themselves
- Add your paddocks — a name is enough; acres let it work out head per acre.
- Move the herd and the pasture they left starts resting the same day. No fallow switch to remember; the dates already carry the answer.
- One herd, one pasture — enforced, so the rest-day figures stay honest.
Butcher day, on the books
- Record the trip to the processor in its three real moments: drop-off, the carcass weight call, and boxes back — with dressing percent, cutting yield, and cost per pound in the freezer derived as the facts arrive.
- Cut sheets you keep: steak thickness, roasts, ground packaging, organs, aging, wrapping. Save one per household and duplicate it next year.
- Selling halves and quarters? Each share carries its own buyer, price (per pound of hanging weight, the way it's actually done), deposit, balance due, and cut sheet. It won't let shares add up to more than one animal.
- And the guard that matters: record a kill date inside any treatment's withdrawal period and the app stops and says so, by product and date, before that date goes on the books.
Her production record, assembled from what you already keep
- Four-generation pedigrees that fill themselves in as you name sires and dams — printable in landscape for a sale.
- Every cow's page shows what she's actually produced: calvings, calves weaned, average calving interval, average weaning weight, and every ease score she's been given. This is the panel you cull on.
- Twins count as one calving — otherwise every interval after them would be wrong.
What a pound of your beef really costs
- Feed, vet, and processing spend tagged to the herd; sales recorded at price per hundredweight — the number cattle actually trade on.
- Feed conversion once you log feed by weight: pounds of feed per pound of gain, the number that says whether a pen is paying its way.
- Schedule F support, bank CSV import, budgets, and cash flow — the processing bill lands under its own category, not "other".
Harold reads your herd's records too
A missed booster, a cow past her window, a feed bill creeping toward the year's biggest line — Harold, the Smart Advisor inside Homestead Paradise, watches your own records and raises what needs attention before you think to ask. Meet Harold.
Questions & answers
Is this for commercial ranches or small herds?
The herd behind the house: homesteads, family cow-calf operations, and folks raising freezer beef for themselves and their neighbors. The standards are the industry's real ones — BIF calving ease and 205-day weaning weights, price per hundredweight — but the workflow is built for tens of head, not thousands. If you run a feedlot with retained-ownership closeouts, you need feedlot software.
Does it do adjusted weaning weights?
Yes — 205-day adjusted weaning weight per the Beef Improvement Federation, computed from the birth weight and weaning weight you record. It only computes inside BIF's own 160–250 day window; outside it you get the plain weaning weight rather than an extrapolation dressed up as a standard.
Can it handle selling beef by halves and quarters?
Yes. A processing record splits into shares — whole, half, quarter, eighth — each with its own buyer, cut sheet, price basis (per pound of hanging weight, per pound packaged, or flat), deposit, and balance due. Marking a share paid posts the income to your books.
Does it track medication withdrawal periods?
Yes, and it takes them seriously. Withdrawal dates are computed when you log a treatment and frozen — correcting the bottle later never changes a food-safety record. And if you record a butcher date that lands inside any withdrawal period, the app stops and tells you, by product and clear date, before saving.
What about other species?
Everything here works for the rest of the place too — sheep, goats, and pigs get their own standards (60-day and 90-day adjusted weights, days-to-250), and poultry, rabbits, bees, the garden, and the pantry are all first-class. One app for the whole homestead, cattle included.
How much does it cost?
There's a free plan, Pro is $7/mo ($49/yr), and Max is $12/mo ($99/yr) — grazing and the medicine cabinet come with Pro, breeding cycles with Max. The 14-day trial includes everything, no card required.
Free, before you sign up for anything
The gestation calculator works out a due date from your breeding date, and the How Many Do I Need? guides answer planning questions with sourced extension figures instead of blog folklore.
Put the herd on the books.
Add your cows, log a weigh-in from the chute, and the rest builds itself as the season goes. Full access for 14 days — no card required.
Start your 14-day trial