3B Farms/3B Enterprises LLC, a partnership enterprise made up of Jerry Billingsley and his sister and brother-in-law, Bonnie and Homer Rinehart has made a new start in the cattle business this year. Located near Lindsay, Oklahoma, the Rineharts formerly ran 120 mother cows and Jerry had around 30 pairs of commercial cattle, primarily Angus and Limousin crosses. Jerry was involved in full-time church work and ran his cattle operation on the side, "kind of a "bi-vocational cattleman," Jerry says.

Having lost their lease on several hundred acres of pastureland, the Rineharts and Billingsley liquidated their individual herds and started over. "CattleMax software was invaluable in the liquidation process," according to Jerry. Early this year (2009) the partners began a new herd of Lowline Angus cattle.

"I started researching and discovered the Lowline Angus breed," Jerry said. "We wanted to get back into the cattle business, but because, we only owned about 210 acres of pasture, we knew we would never be big in numbers. So, we were looking for a 'niche' market. For years we had run the commercial Angus/Limousin crosses with well-bred, low birth weight Angus bulls, so we were Angus people. However, we had talked many times through the years, concerned that Angus had followed the lead of most of the major breeds and bred for large size. Since the buzzword in today's cattle industry is "efficiency," we thought the major breeds had progressively bred up to inefficient sizes. There's nothing efficient about a 1,600 or 1,700 pound cow!"

After some research into the Lowline Angus, Jerry feels the Lowline Angus genetics are the quickest way to achieve an efficient size mama cow in just one generation. Buying registered Angus heifers to breed to Lowline bulls, 3B Farms is maintaining a small herd of full blood Lowline seed stock. The major thrust of the farm is to produce half-blood animals as replacement heifers and bulls to sell to their neighbors, who share the philosophy that a smaller, more efficient cow is better suited to today's market conditions than some of the giant "mongrels" that have become so predominant.

Jerry says, "With our acreage of 210 acres, our target is to eventually run 10 full blood Lowline cows and 30 good-blooded beef cows to breed to Lowlines. We'll probably never be big, but hopefully will fill a niche in our little corner of the beef industry."

After leaving full-time church work, Jerry began work as an independent petroleum land man. But, right now, with the oil and gas industry struggling, Jerry says he has a lot more time to devote to the cattle operation than he originally thought he would.

Jerry has been using CattleMax for his cattle record keeping since Version 2, upgrading as each new version was released. He used the commercial edition until recently, when he upgraded to CattleMax CS registered edition. Asked to name his favorite feature of the software, Jerry says, "After using the software for years, I'm still discovering features and abilities I didn't know about. I guess I like the reports feature and the ability to customize reports the best. Being able to export to Excel is a nice feature as well."

Billingsley offers this advice to new users: Enter the information completely and correctly! The software won't make a mistake, but it can't overcome poorly entered information. In fact, the software will keep you from making many mistakes by not allowing you to enter duplicate records and, having the troubleshoot wizard to check for errors is also a great feature, he says.

The pasture inventory report in CattleMax is the most used of the reports for 3B Farms. "When we liquidated the commercial herd a couple of years ago, my sister (who had always prepared their taxes for their business to give to their accountant) was amazed at the convenience of the reports available to us. She said it made her year-end reporting much easier than it had ever been before. She was able to quickly tell the accountant which cows sold had been raised, which were purchased, etc. This experience made her a believer in CattleMax, as I had been for years," Jerry comments.

Jerry says he's been in and around the cattle business for most of his life. "I suppose I began my record keeping with a Big Chief tablet. I've always believed in the value of keeping good records, so the advent of computers and the Excel spreadsheet program were a boon to me. Of course, with registered cattle, good records are even more important. The advantage of CattleMax over Excel for cattle records is like the improvement of a Lexus over a Tin Lizzie," according to Jerry.

To find out more about 3B Farms and their Lowline Angus cattle, go to their website at http://www.3BEnterprisesLLC.com